The water was brought, and Abner gave the sick man one sip, which was all he would take. To his fever-parched palate the water tasted a vile draught; and he turned from it in loathing and despair. With a tiny mop Logan then moistened the parched mouth with a solution of slippery elm. Presently the moan for water was again uttered, and now the fevered palate at last began to feel its coolness. With unnatural strength he seized the gourd, and drained its contents. "Bless you, my boy!" he exclaimed faintly; then fell back on his pillow exhausted, and dropped immediately into a deep sleep. "He's gone!" exclaimed Bledsoe, as he saw the perspiration gathering upon his brow. "He will never wake from this stupor," and again the sorrowing family were summoned. The solemnity of death reigned in the chamber, where the watchers restrained their weeping, and waited in awe-struck silence the approach of man's last grim foe. "He may live," Abner said at last as the moments passed and Gilcrest breathed on in quiet slumber. "If he does," responded Bledsoe, "that water will have saved him." Gilcrest slept on. Dawn gave place to full day, morning glided into afternoon. Late in the evening he awoke of his own accord, weak as a new-born babe, but with the fever gone and the light of reason once more in his sunken eyes. During the long weeks of convalescence that followed, while his body was slowly regaining vigor, his heart, too, was gradually expanding into a new spiritual life. He had ample time for reflection as he sat propped with pillows in the cushioned chair in his quiet room; and in those long hours of solitude and feeble helplessness, he first began to feel the need of a religion more healing and cheering than that which showed God only as an avenger, stern, partial and dictatorial. Gradually, and as naturally as a plant turns to the sun, his mind turned to that all-loving Father who, being "touched with a feeling for our infirmities," ever tempers his righteous judgments with tenderest mercy, and is ever yearning to deliver all from the penalty of sin. CHAPTER XXXV. CONCLUSION Upon the third Sunday in November, while the congregation in Cane Ridge meeting-house was singing the opening hymn, Hiram Gilcrest entered, and, walking slowly down the aisle, seated himself upon the steps of the pulpit platform. All eyes were turned upon him, and for a moment there was a perceptible pause and break in the singing. Then Mason Rogers lined out the fifth stanza, and the congregation sang with redoubled zest.