“He hev got ter fight that thar question out alone,” said old man Greenought in indignation. “I won’t gin him nare ’nother ‘Amen.’ He an’ his tomfool wantin’ ter preach the gorspel whenst he can’t pray a ’spectable prayer is a puffick blemish on the divine service; it’s fairly makin’ game o’ serious things,--his prayin’ fur the power,--an’ I dunno what the Lord is a-goin’ ter do about it, but _I_ ain’t a-goin’ ter lend _my_ ear nare ’nother time.” It was this choleric gentleman who at last half rose from his knees, and with a peremptory jerk of his thumb toward the failing sunlight brought Haines’s aspiring spirit back to earth. He had gone far on the wings of those poor words, he had flown high. His thought had so possessed him that he did not realize what slight tincture of it his speech distilled for those who heard him. The ministerial thumb jerking a warning of the flight of time, a certain covert jeer in the bent half-covered faces of those about him, brought the fact to him that this prayer was like so many others, voiced only in the throbs of his heart. The light was dying out of his eyes, the sunset glow had quitted him; no fine illumined countenance now he bore, as of one who looks on some transcendent vision; only a conscious disciplined face, quiet and humbled and so patient! He broke off suddenly to say “Amen,” for he sacrificed no connection,--he hardly knew whither he was rambling,--and the people scrambled noisily to their feet, eager for dispersing. “What did you-uns call on him fur, ennyhow?” said old Greenought bluffly to Absalom Tynes. He had somewhat of a swaggering manner as he came up close to the thin, pallid young man. He took great joy in all the militant tropes descriptive of the Christian estate, and with the more liberty suited his secular manner to his ministerial rhetoric. Since he waged so brisk a warfare against Sin and Satan, he often seemed about to turn his weapons, as if to keep his hand in, against his unoffending fellow man. Absalom Tynes did not flinch. “I called on him,” he said a trifle drearily, for the fire of his exaltation, too, was quenched in that pathetic and ineffectual “prayin’ fur the power,” “kase ez I war a-preachin’ the word I knowed he war a-followin’ me, an’ I ’lowed I hed got him ter the p’int whar surely he mought lift up his heart. I ’lowed the Lord mought take pity on him ez longs ter serve him, an’ so touch his lips an’ gin him the gift o’ a tongue o’ fire. I can’t sense it, somehow,--I don’t onderstand it.” “I do,” Parson Greenought capably averred. “The Lord’s put him in the place whar he wants him, an’ he’ll be made ter stay thar,--jes’ a-persistin’ in prayin’ fur the power!” “Thar ain’t no lock an’ key on prayer ez I knows on,” responded the other a trifle testily. “A man kin pray fur what he wills.”