Morton never had other conversion than this. He could not tell of such a struggle as Kike's. All he knew was that there had been conflict. When once he decided, there was harmony and peace. When Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting the whole house ablaze with feeling, and then proceeded to "open the doors of the church" by singing, "Am I a soldier of the Cross, A follower of the Lamb, And shall I fear to own his cause, Or blush to speak his name?" it was with a sort of military exaltation--a defiance of the world, the flesh, and the devil--that Morton went forward and took the hand of the preacher, as a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among those who meant to "----conquer though they die." He was accustomed to say in after years, using the Methodist phraseology, that "God spoke peace to his soul the moment he made up his mind to give up all." That God does speak to the heart of man in its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works with, and not against, the laws of mind. When Morton ceased to contend with his highest impulses there was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and objective a temperament to have subjective fights with fanciful Apollyons. When peace came he accepted it. One of the old brethren who crowded round him that night and questioned him about his experience was "afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion. They wuzn't wras'lin' and strugglin' enough." But the wise Valentine Cook said, when he took Morton's hand to say good-bye, and looked into his clear blue eye, "Hold fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother." _CHAPTER XVIII._ THE PRODIGAL RETURNS. At last the knight was in the saddle. Much as Morton grieved when he thought of Patty, he rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral purpose. Vacillation was over. He was ready to fight, to sacrifice, to die, for a good cause. It had been the dream of his boyhood; it had been the longing of his youth, marred and disfigured by irregularities as his youth had been. In the early twilight of the winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle field, and, as was his wont in moments of cheerfulness, he sang. But not now the "Highland Mary," or "Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night before, some stanzas of which had strongly impressed him and accorded exactly with his new mood, and his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty, perhaps, from his religious life: "In hope of that immortal crown I now the Cross sustain, And gladly wander up and down, And smile at toil and pain; I suffer on my threescore years, Till my Deliv'rer come And wipe away his servant's tears, And take his exile home. * * * * * * * *