He was a man little given to introspection, and with a mind so slow to arrive at a conclusion that it always seemed doubtful if he would ever reach it. Still, when he once settled down on an opinion, his sister Sarah used to say it was with the determination of a snapping-turtle. "He wouldn't let go then till it thundered." His sister Sarah took charge of him, mind and body, when their mother died, and so thoroughly did she manage him that her will was always his, except in that one matter. He would not join the church of his fathers until he got ready, and he would give no reason for his delay. He was twenty when he made his first stubborn stand against her, and for thirty years Sarah wept over him both in public and private, and for thirty years Luella Clark's heart battled with her conscience, which would not let her be "unequally yoked together with an unbeliever." And through all that time Baptist Sloan had kept his own counsel, hoarding every penny he could save, to the refrain of his mother's remembered words: "Over the mountains and over the seas, and be baptized in that same river Jordan, where the dove descended." He had so firmly made up his mind that after that pilgrimage to his Mecca he would marry Luella that he had never viewed his conduct from her standpoint until Sister Bowles opened his eyes. Her speech about the widower aroused him to an undefined sense of danger. All that next hour his inclination shifted like a weather-vane, first to take Luella into his confidence, then not to. By the time the congregation rose for the last hymn he had made up his mind. The moon was coming up now, a faint, misty light struggling through the clouds. He waited until most of the congregation had passed his gate, and then striking out across the potato-field, waited at the turn of the road on the other side of the cedar-grove. It was here that Luella always parted company with the Robinson girls, and went the remaining way alone. It was only a few steps farther to her mother's brown cottage, and he hurried to overtake her before she should reach the gate. "Land o' Goshen! Bap Sloan!" she exclaimed, with a startled little cry, as he came puffing along by her side. "Who'd 'a' dreamed of seeing _you_ here? Why wa'n't you at church to-night? Everybody was asking if you were sick, it's been so long since you've missed." "Stop a minute, Luella," he exclaimed, blocking her way by planting himself directly in her path. "I want to talk to you. I've made up my mind at last to tell you, and I want you to come back and sit down on the stile where nobody else can't hear it."