A flickering glow of lightning, broad and faint, ran over the clouds, and illumined her pale face and her coils of fair hair, as she was slowly laid backward into the depths of the black water. The next moment she rose, dimly descried in the dun light of the gray day, exclaiming that she had risen from the dead, and crying, “Glory! Glory!” in an ecstatic frenzy, as she struggled, with dripping hair and garments, to the shore. All the rocks echoed the shrill, rapturous cry, and “Glory! Glory!” sounded far and faint up and down the river. “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand!” The chorus was renewed, its wistful, subdued spirit contrasting with the joyful exclamation, “Glory!” that still pierced its cadences. Suddenly a sturdy, stout young man with short cropped black hair, a bullet head, and an intent manner, and clad in copper-colored jeans, plunged into the cold water and waded out alone, not waiting to be met by the parson; for when the old man turned about, the candidate was standing in the middle of the river. “Ye notice how turrible brash Josiah Preen be,—can’t wait fur pa’son ter summons him,” one of the horsemen in the gorge observed to the other, “but needs ter dash out in the ruver that-a-way, ez ef thar warn’t water enough ter go ’roun’, an’ he’d miss his chance o’ gittin’ glory.” “He be goin’ ter save his soul hisself; he ain’t goin’ ter wait on the slow arm o’ the Lord,” commented the other. “He’s ez awk’ard ez a peeg caught in a gate,” returned his companion. “I ain’t s’prised none ef he gits flustrated, an’ drowns in that shallow water.” And indeed there was a vigorous scuffle, as the candidate misunderstood the direction and manner in which the stalwart old clergyman proposed to lower his robust bulk. He was under water longer than the usual interval. It splashed and surged above him, and finally he came up, seemingly in an athletic struggle with the parson, choking and sputtering and meekly submitting to be led to the bank, shuffling and hindered by his heavy water-logged garments. The congregation solemnly resumed the chant, as if the rite had been administered in its most decorous method; but its mishaps occasioned great though suppressed joy to the young sinners in the rear and to the two men on horseback in the defile. Most of the candidates were young people, some mere children, for the elders had “got religion” long years ago. The “perfessin’ members” looked on at the ceremony with retrospective eyes, wise in experience.