“Yes, and I can’t realise the joy that lifts and inspires me when I think that I am one of the elect. It’s too good to be true. I have been initiated into the great secret. I have tasted the water of Life. I shall not see Death.” She looked at him with pride. “I knew you would make a matchless lover. I envy Sallie her young eyes and ears!” “You need not envy her. You will never grow old.” “So much the worse if we miss the dreams that fill the souls of the young,” she said with an accent of sorrowful pride. CHAPTER VIII--THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE GASTON found the Preacher quietly smoking, seated on the rustic under a giant oak that stood in the corner of the square. Under this tree the speakers’ stand had always been built for joint debates in political campaigns. Here, when a boy he had heard the great debate between Zebulon B. Vance and Judge Thomas Settle in the fierce campaign which followed the overthrow of Le-gree when the Republican party, under the leadership of Judge Settle made its desperate effort for life. Settle, who was a man of masterful personality, eloquent, and in dead earnest in his appeal for a new South, had made a speech of great power to a crowd that were hostile to every idea for which he stood; and yet he dazzled or stunned them into sullen silence. And then he recalled with flashes of memory vivid as lightning, the miracle that had followed. He could see Vance now as he slowly lifted his big lion-like head, and calmly looked over the sea of faces with eagle eyes that could flash with resistless humour or blaze with the fury of elemental passion. He reviewed the terrible past in which he had played the tragic role of their war Governor, and tore into tatters with the facts of history the logic of his opponent. And then he opened his batteries of wit and ridicule,--wit that cut to the heart’s red blood, and yet convulsed the hearer with its unexpected turn. Ridicule that withered and scorched what it touched into ashes. Five thousand people now in breathless suspense as he swung them into heaven on the wings of deathless words, now screaming with laughter, and now hushed in tears! The scene that followed this triumph! Two stalwart mountain men snatched him from the rostrum and bore him on their shoulders through the shouting, weeping crowd. Women pressed close and kissed his hands, and old men reached forward their hands to touch his garments. Ah! if he could inherit the power of this king among men! To-night as Gaston walked under that tree with his heart beating with the ecstasy of a new-found source of life, he felt that he could do, and that he would do, what the master had done before him! “Charlie, I’ve heard some startling news since you left home, and I can’t sleep nights thinking about it.” “You’ve heard of McLeod’s scheme.” “Exactly. And it means the ruin of this state and the ruin of the South unless it can be defeated.” “How are you going to do it?”