After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees trying to collect his thoughts; determined at one moment to become a Methodist and end his struggles, seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance against the sermon that he must hear. Having walked some distance from the house into the bushes, he came suddenly upon the preacher himself, kneeling in earnest audible prayer. So rapt was the old man in his devotion that he did not note the approach of Goodwin, until the latter, awed at sight of a man talking face to face with God, stopped, trembling, where he stood. Cook then saw him, and, arising, reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a voice tremulous with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Morton endeavored, in a few stammering words, to explain his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed almost at once to have forgotten his presence, for he had taken his seat upon a log and appeared absorbed in thought. Morton retreated just in time to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full. The members of the church, men and women, as they entered, knelt in silent prayer before taking their seats. Hardly silent either, for the old Methodist could do nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth, continually in audible ejaculations of "Ah--ah!" "O my Lord, help!" "Hah!" and other groaning expressions of his inward wrestling--groanings easily uttered, but entirely without a possible orthography. With most, this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and unreserved nature; in later times the ostentatious and hypocritical did not fail to cultivate it as an evidence of superior piety. But now the room is full. People are crowding the doorways. The good old-class leader has shut his eyes and turned his face heavenward. Presently he strikes up lustily, leading the congregation in singing: "How tedious and tasteless the hours When Jesus no longer I see!" When he reached the stanza that declares: "While blest with a sense of his love A palace a toy would appear; And prisons would palaces prove, If Jesus would dwell with me there." there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!" and so forth. At the last quatrain, which runs, "O! drive these dark clouds from my sky! Thy soul-cheering presence restore; Or take me to thee up on high, Where winter and clouds are no more!" there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must have been spoken in a poetic sense. I cannot believe that any of the excellent brethren, even in that moment of exaltation, would really have desired translation to the world beyond the clouds.