She turned and looked at him; they had reached the top of a sort of promontory that jutted out over a leafy sea of the budding forests on the levels of the Cove below. The whole world of the spring was a-blooming. Even the tulip-trees, with their splendid dignity of height and imposing girth, seeming well able to spare garlands, wore to their topmost sprays myriads of red and yellow bells swaying in the breeze. The azaleas were all a-blow, and a flowering vine, the merest groundling, but decked with delicate white corymbs, lay across the path. The view of the sinking sun was intercepted by a great purple range, heavy and lowering of shadow and sombre of hue, but through the gap toward the west, as if glimpsed through some massive gate, was visible a splendid irradiation overspreading the yellow-green valley and the blue mountains beyond; so vividly azure was this tint that the color seemed to share the vernal impulse and glowed with unparalleled radiance, like some embellishment of the spring which the grosser seasons of the year might not compass. From below, where the beetling rock overhung a wilderness of rhododendron, voices came up on the soft air. The others of the party had taken the short cut. She heard her mother’s wheeze, the juggler’s low mellow voice, her father’s irritable raucous response, and she realized that she might speak without interruption. “The Lord’s got nuthin’ fur ye,” she averred vehemently; “he don’t need yer preachin’ an’ he don’t listen ter yer prayers. Ye hev come ter be the laffin’-stock o’ the meetin’ an’ the jye o’ the game-makers o’ the Cove. An’ ef--ef ye don’t gin it up--I--I--ye’ll hev ter gin me up--one or t’other--me or that.” Haines was not slow now. He understood her in a flash. The covert grin, the scornful titter, the zestful wink,--she cared more for these small demonstrations of the unthinkingly merry or the censorious scoffer than for him or the problematic work that his Master might send him the grace to do. Nevertheless, he steadied himself to put this into words that he might make sure beyond peradventure. He had taken off his hat. The wind was blowing back the masses of his fine curling fair hair from his broad low brow. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes alight and intense. He held his head slightly forward. “I must gin you up, or gin up prayin’ fur the power ter preach?” “Prayin’ in public--’fore the folks--I mean; in the church-house or at camp-meetin’. Oh, I can’t marry a man gin over ter sech prayin’ afore the congregations! but ye kin go off yander alone in the woods or on the mountings, an’ pray, ef so minded, till the skies fall, for all I’m keerin’.” “Ye mind kase people laff,” he said slowly.