"Then maybe, Luella, after wheat harvest," he ventured, floundering out of an awkward pause, "after I've been and got back, then--will you have me?" She slipped her hand into his. She would have had him then and there had he asked her, and counted it joy to be allowed to help toil for the funds still needed to carry her saint across the seas. Already she had fitted a halo about the bald spot she had lately ridiculed, and she burned to begin her expiation for that sacrilege. But in the molding of his plans Baptist Sloan had arranged that marriage was to come after the Mecca, and in the hardening process of the years that idea had become so firmly set in his mind that nothing short of supernatural force could have produced a change. It never occurred to him that it was possible to marry before he went on his pilgrimage. He held the hand she had given him awkwardly. This was the hour he had dreamed of, but now that it had come, he was ill at ease, uncertain how to proceed. Suddenly a little breeze, swinging through the orchard, stirred the apple-bough above them, and sent a shower of pink-and-white blossoms across their faces. Velvety soft were the petals, cool with the night dew, and unspeakably sweet. She looked up at him, her face grown wonderfully young and fresh again in the moonlight. He stooped and kissed her. The apple-bough swayed again above them, with another fragrant shower of pink and white. It, too, was gnarly and old, but standing glorified, like them, for a little while in the sweetness of belated blossom-time. It was the talk of the valley--this pilgrimage of Baptist Sloan's. Nobody within its borders had ever been out of sight of land, and the congregation divided itself into two factions regarding him. One division called it sinful pride that sent him chasing away to parts unknown on such an errand. Beargrass Creek was good enough for Bap Sloan's immersion, if it had been good enough for his father's and grandfather's before him. The other side agreed with Luella, according him the halo, and she, in the reflected light of such greatness, beamed proudly and importantly on all her little world.