that the frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being
"convicted of sin." The mourners' bench was crowded with wildly
emulating sinners. Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of
amusement and contempt. At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the
shoulder: "Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don't he, Doctor?" said
Jim.
"So it seems," said Blair dryly.
"You're one o' them scientific fellers that look inter things--what do
YOU allow it is?"
The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his lips.
He had learned caution in that neighborhood. "I couldn't say," he said
indifferently.
"'Tain't no religion," said Slocum emphatically; "it's jest pure
fas'nation. Did ye look at his eye? It's like a rattlesnake's, and them
wimmin are like birds. They're frightened of him--but they hev to do
jest what he 'wills' 'em. That's how he skeert the widder the other
day."
The doctor was alert and on fire at once. "Scared the widow?" he
repeated indignantly.
"Yes. You know how she swooned away. Well, sir, me and that preacher,
Brown, was the only one in that dinin' room at the time. The widder
opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that thar preacher
give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of queer light come in
his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder fluttered and flopped down
in the passage outside, like a bird! And he crawled away like a snake,
and never said a word! My belief is that either he hadn't time to turn
on the hull influence, or else she, bein' smart, got the door shut
betwixt her and it in time! Otherwise, sure as you're born, she'd
hev been floppin' and crawlin' and sobbin' arter him--jist like them
critters we've left."
"Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they'll lynch
you," said the doctor, with a laugh. "Mrs. MacGlowrie simply had an
attack of faintness from some overexertion, that's all."
Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away. Mrs. MacGlowrie had
evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of
|