"As soon as Dolly stood up," Tobe said, with a satisfied laugh, "I knew she had it in for the whole dang bunch from the way she looked. An' when she swatted 'em like she did with them keen points o' hers I mighty nigh kicked the bench in front o' me to pieces. I throwed my hat agin the ceilin' an' yelled. She's a corker, Mr. Saunders." Mostyn could not hear Saunders's reply. As he came on to the house he began to whistle softly. Mostyn saw him pause on the grass, light a cigar, and begin to smoke as he strolled to and fro. "Happy man!" Mostyn said, as he went back to his bed. "He's never had anything to bother him. There must be a correct law of life, and he seems to understand and obey it. He used to try to get me to listen to his ideas, but I thought he was a fanatic. Lord, Lord, I thought he was a fool!" CHAPTER XIX The next morning, Saunders having left home on some business pertaining to the building of his new cotton-factory, Mostyn started out on one of his all-day rambles in the mountains. As he was passing the store Wartrace called out to him cordially. "You ought to come around about one o'clock, Mr. Mostyn," he said. "A big crowd will be here to listen to John Leach, the tramp preacher. He's billed for my store, an' he never fails to be on time." Mostyn passed on after exchanging a few labored platitudes with the storekeeper. He shrank from the thought of meeting a crowd even of simple mountain people. The high open spaces above silently beckoned to him. Never before had solitude in the breast of Nature had such appeal for him. He found growing interest in plants, flowers, insects, and birds. He wondered if they, too, suffered from grief and pain. At noon, when the day was warmest, he reclined on the mossy bank of a clear brook. He took off his shoes and bathed his feet in the cool, swift-running water, feeling the chill course through his veins. What was it that kept whispering within him that here and here alone was the balm for such wounds as his? Contrasting the mystic quiet of his surroundings with the snarling jangle of the life he had led in town, a faint hope of eventual peace began to spring up within him. Once he raised his hands to the infinite blue above him, and his thought, if not his words, was all but a prayer for mercy. He was descending the mountain road near sunset. The valley into which he was going was already in shadow. Suddenly he heard a mellow masculine voice singing a hymn, and, turning a bend in the road, his body bent downward and swinging his hat in his hand, was Leach, the preacher. "Well, well, well!" Leach exclaimed, gladly, when he was near enough to recognize him. "I heard you were in these diggings, and was sorry not to see you out at my meeting." Leach took his hand, pressing his fingers in a tense and sincere clasp while he looked into his eyes tenderly. His strong face filled with emotion; his big lower lip actually shook.