There was silence in the room. Douglas, looking over the backs of many familiar heads, felt a curious yearning affection for these neighbors who so far had met his experiment so kindly. Then his eyes turned to the aspens without the window and beyond these to the far red clouds over Fire Mesa. The first snow of the season was beginning to sift through the trees. He wished that he had the courage to ask Mrs. Falkner what she thought of Inez' poem: A fire mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell-- but he would rather have cut out his tongue than repeat the verse before this audience. Mr. Fowler was running his fingers through his beard, glancing hesitatingly from Douglas to Peter. "Well, is it the sense of this meeting," asked the postmaster, "to let the preacher tell us how he feels about it?" "Go to it, old wrangler," said Charleton. "I can spout the Persian Poet to 'em if you run short of Bible stuff." "Baa--a--a!" bleated a small boy in the back of the room. "I'm going to give the first young one that makes a disturbance a dose of aspen switch," said Grandma Brown. There was a general chuckle that quieted as Mr. Fowler began to speak. "Religion doesn't rest on proof. It rests on Faith. And faith is something every human being possesses. If you plant a seed, you have faith that it will produce a plant. No power of yours can bring the plant. But you have faith--in what?--that the plant will appear. Every night that you go to bed you believe that a new day will come. You cannot bring that day but you have absolute faith that to-morrow will be brought by--what? The stars come nightly to the sky, the moon and the earth whirl in their appointed places. You have absolute confidence that they will continue to float in the heavens. On what do you place that confidence? "Friends, I cannot prove to you that there is a God. But if you will be patient with me, I will give you a faith that asks no proof." He opened his Bible and began to read. "And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.... "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.... "He that believeth in me, believeth not in me but in Him that sent me. And he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me. I come a light unto the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Mr. Fowler paused and closed the book. "Words!" said Charleton. "Just poetry!"