himself stood face to face; thought of him, therefore, with a reverence
whose roots dug deep down below his coarseness, into his uncouth
gropings after God. Outside of this,--Gaunt had come to the mountains
years before, penniless, untaught, ragged, intent only on the gospel,
which he preached with a keen, breathless fervor. Scofield had given him
a home, clothed him, felt for him after that the condescending, curious
affection which a rough barn-yard hen might feel for its adopted poult,
not yet sure if it will turn out an eagle or a silly gull. It was a
strange affinity between the lank-limbed, cloudy-brained enthusiast at
one end of the porch and the shallow-eyed, tobacco-chewing old Scofield
at the other,--but a real affinity, striking something deeper in their
natures than blood-kinship. Whether Dode shared in it was doubtful; she
echoed the "Poor David" in just the voice with which high-blooded women
pity a weak man. Her father saw it. He had better not tell her his fancy
to-night about Gaunt wishing her to be his wife.

He hallooed to him, bidding him "hap up an' come along till see what the
Yankees were about.--Go in, Dode,--you sha'n't be worrit, child."

Gaunt came closer, fastening his thin coat. A lean face, sharpened by
other conflicts than disease,--poetic, lonesome eyes, not manly.

"I am going," he said, looking at the girl. All the pain and struggle of
years came up in that look. She knew where he was going: did she care?
he thought She knew,--he had told her, not an hour since, that he meant
to lay down the Bible, and bring the kingdom of Jesus nearer in another
fashion: he was going to enlist in the Federal army. It was God's cause,
holy: through its success the golden year of the world would begin on
earth. Gaunt took up his sword, with his eye looking awe-struck straight
to God. The pillar of cloud, he thought, moved, as in the old time,