The Quickening

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The Quickening

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Title: The Quickening
Author: Francis Lynde
Illustrator: E. M. Ashe
Release Date: December 19, 2005 [EBook #17357]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Illustration: Tom was fronting the firebrand Dabney like a man.

THE QUICKENING
By
FRANCIS LYNDE Author of The Grafters, The Master of Appleby, etc., etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E.M. ASHE
INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1906 Francis Lynde
March
PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N.Y.
To My Mother
CHAPTER PAGE
I Bethesda 1
II The Cedars of Lebanon 11
III Of the Fathers Upon the Children 21
IV The Newer Exodus 25
V The Dabneys of Deer Trace 32
VI Blue Blood and Red 44
VII The Prayer of the Righteous 57
VIII The Backslider 65
IX The Race to the Swift 75
X The Shadow of the Rock 90
XI The Trumpet-Call 99
XII The Iron in the Forge Fire 107
XIII A Sister of Charity 116
XIV On Jordan's Bank 124
XV No?l 140
XVI The Bubble, Reputation 145
XVII Absalom, My Son! 160
XVIII The Awakening 172
XIX Issachar 188
XX Dry Wells 201
XXI Gilgal 216
XXII Love 226
XXIII Tarred Ropes 242
XXIV The Under-Depths 255
XXV The Plow in the Furrow 265
XXVI As With a Mantle 279
XXVII Swept and Garnished 294
XXVIII The Burden of Habakkuk 306
XXIX As Brutes That Perish 319
XXX Through a Glass Darkly 331
XXXI The Net of the Fowler 338
XXXII Whoso Diggeth a Pit 347
XXXIII The Wine-Press of Wrath 357
XXXIV The Smoke of the Furnace 366
XXXV A Soul in Shackles 378
XXXVI Free Among the Dead 387
XXXVII Whose Yesterdays Look Backward 399
THE QUICKENING
I
BETHESDA
The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the field--to use Brother Crafts' own word--was white to the harvest.
Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.
Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds--the present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region round-about.
"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?" asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.
"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o' grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n--honest and even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit, and ye cayn't change him."
"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' to do it."
"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly put down by the tall mountaineer.
"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny--and me a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit how no-'count and triflin' I'd been."
Thomas Jefferson had opened the church-house doors and windows and was out among the unhitched teams looking for Scrap Pendry, who had been one of a score to go forward for prayers the night before. So it happened that he overheard the flat-chested mountaineer's tribute to his mother. It warmed him generously; but there was a boyish scowl for Japheth Pettigrass. What had the horse-trader been saying to make it needful for Bill Layne to speak up as his mother's