Away down the river went the Reverend Timotheus; at the same time Fred Macdonald, on horseback, hailed the ferry-boat, crossed the river, and galloped down the opposite bank, and Crupp, a half an hour later, might have been seen lying on his oars in a skiff in a shallow a mile above the town, waiting to board the _Excellence_, as she came down the stream. “’Pears to me preachers are out for a walk to-day,” said one old lady to another across a garden fence, in one edge of the town. “I saw Mr. Brown ’way down the street ever so far to-day, an’ now here’s Brother Wedgewell ’way out here. I thought like enough he was goin’ to call, but he went straight along an’ only bowed, awful solemn.” Parson Wedgewell certainly walked very fast, and the more ground he covered the more rapidly his feet moved, and not his feet only. In long stretches of road shut in by forest trees he found himself devoid of a single mental restraint, and he thought aloud as he walked. “Rebuked by a sinner! O God! with my whole heart I have sought thee, and thou hast instead revealed thyself not only unto babes and sucklings, but unto one who is certainly not like unto one of these little ones. Teach me thy will, for verily in written books I fear I have found it not. What if the boat reaches the landing before I do, and this lost sheep escapes me? Father in Heaven, the shepherd is astray in his way, even as the sheep is; but O thou! who didst say that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, make the feeble power of man to triumph over great engines and the hurrying of mighty waters. Fulfill thy promise, O God, for the sake of the soul thou hast committed to my charge!” Then, like a man who believed in helping his own prayers along, the parson snatched off his coat and hat and increased his speed. He was far outside of his own parish, for most of his congregation were townsmen, and the old pastor knew no more of the geography of the country about him than he did of Chinese Tartary. He had taken what was known as the “River Road,” and thus far his course had been plain; now, however, he reached a place where the road divided, and which branch to take he did not know. Ordinary sense of locality would have taught him in an instant, but the parson had no such sense; there was no house in sight at which he could ask his way, and, to add to his anxiety, the _Excellence_ came down the river to his left and rear, puffing and shrieking as if the making of hideous noises was the principal qualification of a river steamer. The old man fell upon his knees, raised his face and hands toward heaven, and exclaimed, “The hosts of hell are pressing hard, O God! Thou who didst guide thy chosen people with a pillar of fire, show now to thy unworthy servant that thou art God!” What the parson saw he never told, but he sprang to his feet and went down the left-hand road at a lively run, a moment after Tom Adams, half a mile in the rear, had shaded his eyes and exclaimed,