THROUGH the twilight that filled the valley a winding white pike was all that could be seen distinctly. The brown-furrowed corn-fields were blotted out in the dusk. Farm-houses had merged their outlines into the dark mass of the surrounding trees. Only the apple-orchards kept their identity, and that because it was blossom-time, and the dewy night air was heavy with their sweetness.
Somewhat back from the pike, yet near enough for the rattle of passing wheels to give a sense of companionship, a man sat rocking back and forth in a narrow vine-inclosed porch. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and collarless, and the slow creak of the old wooden chair seemed to voice his physical comfort like a purr; but it by no means expressed the state of his mind. That was attuned to something wholly melancholic, like the croaking of frogs in the pond below his house, or the far-away baying of a dismal-minded hound, which, tied behind some cabin across the clearing, was making the peaceful Sabbath evening vibrant with its misery.
"I can't help havin' a sort of fellow-feelin' for that dawg," muttered the man, raising his head to listen, and passing his hand slowly over the bald spot on his crown. "Must be considerable of a relief to let out and howl like that when you feel bad. There's been times when I wouldn't 'a' minded tryin' it myself for a spell."
Then he settled back into his chair with a long-drawn sigh. He was awaiting the second ringing of the church bell. The first one had tolled its summons through the valley nearly an hour before, and vehicles were beginning to rattle along the pike toward evening service. The little frame meeting-house, known as the Upper Beargrass Church, stood in a grove of cedars just beyond Baptist Sloan's potato-field. It was near enough for any one sitting on his porch to hear the preacher's voice all through the sermon, and sometimes when he waxed eloquent at the close, in a series of shouted exhortations, even the words were distinctly audible.
But never in all the years of his remembrance had Baptist Sloan listened to the services of the sanctuary from his door-step. On the few occasions that illness had kept him at home, pain and multitudinous bedclothes had shut out all sound of song or sermon; and at other times he was the most punctual attendant of all the congregation, not excepting even the sexton. People wondered why this was so, for he was pointed out as the black sheep of the flock, a man little better than an infidel, and belonging to that stiff-necked and proud generation which merits the anathemas of all right-minded people.
That he was a riddle which Upper Beargrass Church had been trying vainly to read for thirty years was a fact well known to the reprobate himself; for he had been openly preached at from the pulpit, laboured with in private, and many a time made the subject of special prayer. So, as he sat on the porch in the dark, with only the croaking of the frogs and the distant baying of the hound to break the stillness, it was with no surprise whatever that he heard his own name spoken by some one driving up the pike.
He could not see the horse that plodded along at a tortoise-like gait, or the old carryall that sagged and creaked with the weight of two big men on the front seat and a woman and three children on the back; but he recognized the voice as that of Mrs. Jane Bowles. Thin and strident, it stabbed the stillness like the rasping shrill of a katydid. She was leaning forward to speak to the visiting minister on the front seat.
"We're coming to Bap Sloan's house now, Brother Hubbs," she called in high staccato. "I want you should rub it into him good to-night in your sermon. He's a regular wolf in sheep's clothing, if ever there was one. Twice on a Sunday, for fifty-two weeks in the year, he's sitting in that third pew from the front, as pious as any pillar in the congregation. You can count up for yourself how many sermons he must have heard, for he's fifty, if he's a day. But in spite of all that anybody can say or do, he won't be immersed and join. He's held out against everything and everybody till he's gospel-hardened. I ain't saying he doesn't put into the collection-box regular, or that he ain't a moral man outwardly; but that outward show of goodness only makes his example worse for the young folks. I never can look at him without saying to myself, 'But inwardly ye are ravening wolves.'"
The old horse had crawled along almost to the gate by this time, but Sister Bowles, not being able to see any one on the porch, went on, serenely unaware of being overheard.
"And there's Luella Clark that he's courted off and on for twenty years. It makes me real mad when I think of the good offers she's had and let slip account of him. She couldn't marry him, being close communion, and not tolerating the idea of being 'unequally yoked together with unbelievers.' 'Twouldn't 'a' been right; and yet, somehow, she didn't seem to be quite able to give him up, when that was the only thing lacking. He'd make a good husband, for there never was a better brother lived than he was to his sister Sarah. She kept house for him till the day of her death. They say that last winter, when she lay there a-dying, she told him she couldn't go easy till she saw him immersed; but all he'd say was, 'Oh, don't ask me! I can't now, Sarah. Some day I will, but not now.'"