“I ’lowed I seen somebody jes’ now,” urged Jube. “Shadder, I reckon,” said the voice unconcernedly. “Good-night.” He moved off into the obscurity, and Jube sank down beside his father, laying an excited clutch on his arm. “Thar war another man with him, a strange man, dressed diff’ent, ez I never see afore.” He listened to the retreating footfalls. “Thar air two of ’em,—two of ’em, keeping step keerful, and walking like one man!” The parson rose, his stiff joints creaking. “I don’t keer ef thar be forty, or a hunderd. An’ ef Satan hev got a mind, he kin set on the anvil down yander or work at the forge ez a constancy ’fore I’ll be fool enough agin ter kem out in the dark an’ roost up on a laidge on the mounting ter spy him out, alongside o’ sech a turrible, turrible, disobejient miser’ble critter ez ye hev kem ter be. They ’lowed ’twar me a-crowin’,—_me_, the pa’son!” “I plumb forgot, dad,” said the contrite Jube. “An’ Jake Baintree, what I refused ter baptize! This tale will go the rounds o’ the kentry!” IX. It was indeed before the dawn that Teck Jepson set forth on his journey. Upon the ultimate heights of the zenith midnight had poised, and had thence flitted away into those unrealized spaces whither all that has been goes at last. Constellations that he lately knew as familiars of the meridian hung low, in this unaccustomed hour, about the western horizon. Unwonted influences were astir in the brain. A sense of spiritual freshness, of bodily renewal, of aloofness from the world, possessed the hour,—a freedom from the dominant mundane spirit that had swayed the day before. The dark earth lay, as it were, uncreated in the immense voids of the night. The soul seemed nearer its nativity, fresh from the hands of the Creator. In this isolation of identity, this perfect poise, this reverent cognizance of high solemnities, it seemed that one’s lips might be opened, that one might prophesy or sing some psalmodic inspiration, so replete with the sense of fine bestowals was the time.