Cæsar returned home from a preaching tour with a great and sudden thought. He had been calling on strangers to flee from the wrath to come, and yet there were those of his own house whose faces were not turned Zionwards. That evening he held an all-night prayer-meeting for the conversion of Katherine and Pete. Through six long hours he called on God in lusty tones, until his throat cracked and his forehead streamed. The young were thoughtless, they had the root of evil in them, they flew into frivolity from contrariness. Draw the harrow over their souls, plough the fallows of their hearts, grind the chaff out of their household, let not the sweet apple and the crabs grow on the same bough together, give them a Melliah, let not a sheaf be forgotten, grant them the soul of this girl for a harvest-home, and of this boy for a last stook. Cæsar was dissatisfied with the results. He was used to groaning and trembling and fainting fits. “Don't you feel the love?” he cried. “I do--here, under the watch-pocket of my waistcoat.” Towards midnight Katherine began to fail. “Chain the devil,”, cried Cæsar. “Once I was down in the pit with the devil myself, but now I'm up in the loft, seeing angels through the thatch. Can't you feel the workings of the Spirit?” As the clock was warning to strike two Katherine thought she could, and from that day forward she led the singing of the women in the choir among “The Christians.” Pete remained among the unregenerate; but nevertheless “The Christians” saw him constantly. He sat on the back form and kept his eyes fixed on the “singing seat.” Observing his regularity, Cæsar laid a hand on his head and told him the Spirit was working in his soul at last. Sometimes Pete thought it was, and that was when he shut his eyes and listened to Katherine's voice floating up, up, up, like an angel's, into the sky. But sometimes he knew it was not; and that was when he caught himself in the middle of Cæsar's mightiest prayers crooking his neck past the pitching bald pate of Johnny Niplightly, the constable, that he might get a glimpse of the top of Katherine's bonnet when her eyes were down. Pete fell into a melancholy, and once more took to music as a comforter. It was not a home-made whistle now, but a fiddle bought out of his wages. On this he played in the cowhouse on winter evenings, and from the top of the midden outside in summer. When Cæsar heard of it his wrath was fearful. What was a fiddler? He was a servant of corruption, holding a candle to disorderly walkers and happy sinners on their way into the devil's pinfold. And what for was fiddles? Fiddles was for play-actors and theaytres. “And theaytres is _there_,” said Cæsar, indicating with his foot one flag on the kitchen-floor, “and hell flames is _there_,” he added, rolling his toe over to the joint of the next one.