CHAPTER XIII.
TWO TO ONE.
Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to preach twice every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider of his time. And since he expected to leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in order.
When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.
John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer. Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee, reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach. When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field before the engagement begins. Then he dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil." When at last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze. Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in the presence of such a scene:
"O sun of righteousness, arise
With healing in thy wing;
To my diseased, my fainting soul,
Life and salvation bring.
"These clouds of pride and sin dispel,
By thy all-piercing beam;
Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart
With holy hopes inflame."
By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.
"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle: "you git down!"
"What for?" said Magruder.
"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."