The following day a stranger came up to Keith. He was a thin man between youth and middle age, with a long face and a deep voice, and light hair that stuck up on his head. His eyes were deep-set and clear; his mouth was grave and his chin strong. He wore a rusty black coat and short, dark trousers. "Are you Mr. Keith?" His voice was deep and melancholy. Keith bowed. He could not decide what the stranger was. The short trousers inclined him to the church. "I am proud to know you, sir. I am Mr. Drummond, the Methodist preacher." He gripped Keith's hand. Keith expressed the pleasure he had in meeting him. "Yes, sir; I am proud to know you," repeated Mr. Drummond. "I hear you have come out on the right side, and have given a righteous reproof to that wretched dancing Jezebel who is trying to destroy the souls of the young men of this town." Keith said that he was not aware that he had done anything of the kind. As to destroying the young men, he doubted if they could be injured by her--certainly not by dancing. In any event, he did not merit his praise. Mr. Drummond shook his head. "Yes, sir. You are the first young man who has had the courage to withstand the wiles of that person. She is the most abandoned creature in this town; she beguiles the men so that I can make no impression on them. Even when I am holding my meetings, I can hear the strains of her fiddles and the shouts of the ribald followers that throng her den-of-Satan. I have tried to get her to leave, but she will not go." Keith's reply was that he thought she had as much right there as any one, and he doubted if there were any way to meet the difficulty. "I am sorry to hear you say that," said the preacher. "I shall break up her sink of iniquity if I have to hold a revival meeting at her very door and call down brimstone and fire upon her den of wickedness" "If you felt so on the subject of dancing, why did you come here?" demanded Keith. "It seems to me that dancing is one of the least sins of Gumbolt." The preacher looked at him almost pensively. "I thought it my duty. I have encountered ridicule and obloquy; but I do not mind them. I count them but dross. Wherever I have found the print of my Lord's shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my feet also." Keith bowed. The speech of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth carried its cachet with it. The stiff, awkward figure had changed. The preacher's sincerity had lent him dignity, and his simple use of a simple tinker's words had suddenly uplifted him to a higher plane. "Do not you think you might go about it in a less uncompromising spirit? You might succeed better and do more good," said Keith. "No, sir; I will make no compromise with the devil--not even to succeed. Good-by. I am sorry to find you among the obdurate." As he shook hands, his jaw was set fast and his eye was burning. He strode off with the step of a soldier advancing in battle.