The Redemption of David Corson | Page 6

a
message, too?"
"It was delivered to me that on the holy Sabbath day I should go to the
camp in Baxter's clearing and preach to the lumbermen."
"Then thee must go, my son."

"I will," he answered, taking her hand affectionately, but with Quaker
restraint, and leading her to the table.
The family, consisting of the mother, an adopted daughter Dorothea,
the daughter's husband Jacob and son Stephen, sat down to a simple but
bountiful supper, during which and late into the evening the young
mystic pondered the vision which he believed himself to have seen, and
the message which he believed himself to have heard. In his musings
there was not a tremor or a doubt; he would have as soon questioned
the reality of the old farm-house and the faces of the family gathered
about the table. Of the susceptibility of the nerves to morbid activity, or
the powers of the overdriven brain to objectify its concepts, he had
never even dreamed. He was a credulous and unsophisticated youth,
dwelling in a realm of imagination rather than in a world of reality and
law. He had much to learn. His education was about to begin, and to
begin as does all true and effective education, in a spiritual temptation.
The Ghebers say that when their great prophet Ahriman was thrown
into the fire by the order of Nimrod, the flames into which he fell
turned into a bed of roses, upon which he peacefully reclined. This
innocent Quaker youth had been reclining upon a bed of roses which
now began to turn into a couch of flames.
CHAPTER II.
AND SATAN CAME ALSO
"It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music
mute, And ever widening slowly silence all."
--Tennyson.
At the moment when Stephen was sounding the horn to summon the
young mystic to his supper, a promiscuous crowd of loafers with chairs
tilted against the wall of the village tavern received a shock.
They heard the tinkle of bells in the distance, and looking in the
direction of this unusual sound, saw a team of splendid coal-black
horses dash round a corner and whirl a strange vehicle to the door of

the inn.
There were two extraordinary figures on the front seat of the wagon.
The driver was a sturdy, thick-set man whose remarkable personal
appearance was fixed instantly and ineradicably in the mind of the
beholder by an enormous moustache whose shape, size and color
suggested a crow with outstretched wings. As if to emphasize the
ferocious aspect lent him by this hairy canopy which completely
concealed his mouth, Nature had duplicated it in miniature by brows
meeting above his nose and spreading themselves, plume-like, over a
pair of eyes which gleamed so brightly that they could be felt, altho'
they were so deep-set that they could scarcely be seen.
This fierce and buccaneerish person summoned the dozing hostler in a
coarse, imperative voice, flung him the reins, sprang from his seat, and
assisted his companion to alight. She gave him her hand with an air of
utter indifference, bestowed upon him neither smile nor thanks, and
dropped to the ground with a light flutter like a bird. Turning instantly
toward the tavern, she ascended the steps of the porch under a fusillade
of glances of astonishment and admiration. Young and beautiful,
dressed in a picturesque and brilliant Spanish costume, she carried
herself with the ease and dignity of a princess, and looked straight past,
or rather through the staring crowd, fastened like inverted brackets to
the tavern wall. Her great, dreamy eyes did not seem to note them.
When she and her companion had entered the hall and closed the door
behind them, every tilted chair came down to the floor with a bang, and
many voices exclaimed in concert, "Who the devil is she?" Curiosity
was satisfied at eight o'clock in the evening, for at that hour Doctor
Paracelsus Aesculapius, as he fantastically called himself, opened the
doors of his traveling apothecary shop and exposed his "universal
panacea" for sale, while at the same time, "Pepeeta, the Queen of
Fortune Tellers," entered her booth and spread out upon a table the
paraphernalia by which she undertook to discover the secrets of the
future.
When the evening's work was ended, Pepeeta at once retired; but the
doctor entered the bar-room, followed by a curious and admiring crowd.

He was in a happy and expansive frame of mind, for he had done a
"land office" business in this frontier village which he was now for the
first time visiting.
"Have a drink, b-b-boys?" he asked, looking over the crowd with an air
of superiority and waving his hand with an inclusive gesture. The
motley throng of loafers sidled up to