“Ef people laff at me kase I be foolish, I mind it. Ef people laff at me kase _they_ air fools, they air welcome ter thar laffin’ an’ thar folly too.” This discrimination was plain. But as he still looked dreamy and dazed, she made the application for him. “Ye can’t preach; ye can’t pray; ye make a idjit o’ yerself tryin’. I can’t marry no sech man ’thout ye gin up prayin’ ’fore folks.” “Ye think mo’ o’ folks ’n the Lord?” Haines demanded, with a touch of that ministerial asperity expert in imputing sin. But so widely diffused are the principles of Christianity that the well-grounded layman can rarely be silenced even by a minister with a call, much less poor uncommissioned tongue-tied Owen Haines. “The Lord makes allowances which people can’t an’ won’t,” she retorted. “He hears the thought an’ the sigh, an’ even the voice of a tear.” “He does! He does!” cried Owen Haines, fired by the very suggestion, his face, his eyes, his lips aflame. “An’ may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth an’ my right hand be withered an’ forget its cunning, may agues an’ anguish rack my body an’ may my mind dwindle ter the sense of a brute beastis, ef ever I promise ter put bonds on prayer or eschew the hope of my heart in the house of God. I’ll pray fur the power--I’ll pray fur the power ter preach till I lose the gift o’ speech--till I kin say no word but ‘the power!--the power!--the power’!” Euphemia cowered before the enthusiasm her chance phrase had conjured up. She had not, in a certain sense, doubted the sincerity of her lover’s religious fervor. She secretly and unconsciously doubted the validity of any spiritual life. She could not postulate the sacrificial temperament. She could not realize how he would have embraced any votive opportunity. He was of the type akin to the anchorite, the monastic recluse,--who in default of aught else offers the kernel of life, if not its empty shell,--even the martyr. For he had within him that fiery exaltation which might have held him stanch at the stake, and lifted his voice in triumphant psalmody above the roar of the flames. But although he had had his spiritual sufferings of denial, and floutings, and painful patience, and hope that played the juggler with despair, he had anticipated no ordeal like this. He looked in her eyes for some token of relenting, his own full of tears above the hardly quenched brightness of his fervor of faith, a quiver on his lips.