“Huh!” growled the old lumberman. “So it's you, is it? What are you doing here?”
“There's a meeting—” David began.
“Meeting? No, by the eternal! there's not going to be any meeting, now nor ever! I'll throw them out neck and crop; I'll boot them out, but there'll be no meeting. Go home!” In the dark the heavy-jowled old man scowled at the slender young dominie. Suddenly he put his hand on David's shoulder. “Dean—Dean—” he said; “you and that little wife of yours—” That was all he could say. Mary's boy, at home, was making the awful struggle for life.
And there was no meeting. A month later Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome went to the Episcopalians, and a half year later to the Congregationalists, where they remained. There was a lull in the church quarrel during the days when little Davy was sickest, and while David and 'Thusia were in the first cruel days of grief. There were but few bitter enough to wish to take up the fight again against the sorrowing 'Thusia. The quarrel was buried with little Davy, for when David entered the pulpit again, and the congregation waited to learn how their leaders would lead them, the powerful man of the church decided for them. When David came down from the pulpit old Sam Wiggett, stolid, heavy-faced and thick-necked, waited for him at the head of the aisle and placed his arm around David's shoulders, and Mary Derling crossed the aisle and stood beside 'Thusia Dean.
David had won.
VII. MACK
DAVID had won. Except for the defection of the Hardcomes—who left behind them a feeling that they were trouble-makers and were not greatly regretted—the church continued its even tenor. It must always be a question, however, whether David would not have done better by losing. Riverbank grew in population, as shown by the census, but the growth was not one to prosper the Presbyterian Church at Riverbank. The sawmills brought nearly all the newcomers—immigrants from Germany almost entirely—and these had their own churches. The increase in population offered little material with which to build up David's congregation.