CHAPTER VIII
Henderson found Brother Fulkerson a preacher who, more by service and example and comforting the disconsolate than by pulpit oratory, held a strong influence upon his people, and commanded their deep devotion.
His quiet ministry had indeed been heard of beyond the hills and even in the black days of feudal hatred, dead lines had been wiped out for him so that he came and went freely among both factions, and no man doubted him.
Kindly, grave and steadfast, Henderson found him to be, and possessed of a natively shrewd brain, as well. Blossom was usually at the Fulkerson house when Jerry called, but she fitted silently in the background and her eyes regarded him with that shy gravity, in which he found an insurmountable barrier to better acquaintance.
One morning as he passed the Fulkerson abode he found the girl alone by the gate—and paused there.
The season's first tenderness of greenery along the slopes had ripened now to the sunburned and freckled warmth of midsummer, but the day was young enough for lingering drops of the heavy dew to remain on the petals of the morning-glories and the weed stalks along the roadside. Between the waxen delicacy and rich variety of the morning-glory petals and the bloom of the girl, Jerry fell musingly to tracing analogies.
The morning-glory is among the most plebeian of flowering things, boasting no nobility except a charm too fragile to endure long its coarse companionship with smart-weed and mullen, so that each day it comes confidently into being only to shrink shortly into disappointed death.
Blossom, too, would in the course of nature and environment, have a brief bloom and a swift fading—but just now her beauty was only enhanced by the pathos of its doom.
"Blossom," he smilingly suggested, "I'd like to be friends with you, just as I am with Turner. I'm not really an evil spirit you know, yet you seem always half afraid of me."
The girl's lashes drooped shyly, veiling her splendid eyes, but she made no immediate response to his amenities, and Henderson laughed.