"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.
"I don't know. How did you come here, Morton?"
"Well, I'll tell you a straight story. I was gambling on Sunday night——"
"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.
"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had—horse and gun and all—I seemed clean crazy. I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had, and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and gun. Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool, hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my colt with. That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose horse it was, and where I was going."
"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the young man go. You ought to be thankful that God in his good providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent blood. He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends church with his mother. I am sorry he has got into bad habits."
"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party; and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound Morton's arms and let him go. The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as "his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck." The horse and gun were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse, each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate attention. In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of gambling and Sabbath-breaking. But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in a day. In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements. Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man. Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech. After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he should become a gambler? After thinking over it a while, however, the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost as certainly as a gambler or a thief.
Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present day should be a little too severe on our good friend Mr. Donaldson, I must express my sympathy for the worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward the scene of conflict. Dear, genteel, and cultivated Methodist reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of Methodism, though you have so far departed from the standard of the fathers as to wear gold and costly apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not too hard upon our good friend Donaldson. Had you, fastidious Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs, and refined preachers, as you sit in your cushioned pew—had you lived in Ohio sixty years ago, would you have belonged to the Methodists, think you? Not at all! your nerves would have been racked by their shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by their ditties, your grammatical knowledge shocked beyond recovery by their English; you could never have worshiped in an excitement that prostrated people in religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and obstinate sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks. It is easy to build the tombs of the prophets while you reap the harvest they sowed, and after they have been already canonized. It is easy to build the tombs of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets of our own time, maybe. Permit me, Methodist brother, to believe that had you lived in the days of Parson Donaldson, you would have condemned these rude Tishbites as sharply as he did. But you would have been wrong, as he was. For without them there must have been barbarism, worse than that of Arkansas and Texas. Methodism was to the West all that Puritanism was to New England. Both of them are sublime when considered historically; neither of them were very agreeable to live with, maybe.
But, alas! I am growing as theological as Mr. Donaldson himself. Meantime Morton has forded the creek at a point more favorable than his crossing of the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and approaches his home, do the embarrassments of his situation become more appalling. If he could only be sure of himself in the future, there would be hope. But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.
In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a "trace" that led him toward home by a much nearer way than he had come. After riding twenty miles, he emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just as the sun was sitting. It happened that the house where he found a hospitable supper and lodging was already set apart for Methodist preaching that evening. After supper the shuck-bottom chairs and rude benches were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate space was left to be filled by seats which should be brought in by friendly neighbors. Morton gathered from the conversation that the preacher was none other than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was held in such esteem that it was even believed that he had a prophetic inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing. This "class" had been founded by his preaching, in the days of his vigor. He had long since given up "traveling," on account of his health. He was now a teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most scholarly of the Western itinerants. He had set out on a journey among the churches with whom he had labored, seeking to strengthen the hands of the brethren, who were like a few sheep in the wilderness. The old Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome the final visit of Paul the Aged than did the backwoods churches this farewell tour of Valentine Cook.