Without avail old Jasper had argued with him,
with fresh scalps dangling at his own belt. One night Jim turned a
revival meeting into a fight with bench legs, beat a hard-hearted money
lender until he was taken home almost a mass of pulp. At nineteen he
turned a hapless school teacher out of the school house, nailed up the
door, and because the teacher muttered against it, threw the pedagogue
into the creek. At twenty he seemed to hear a voice coming from afar. A
man going to mill said that he saw Jim beside a log on his knees in the
woods, praying; he was called a liar, knocked down his insulter and went
on with his grist. He had spoken the truth, for on the night following,
Jim arose in the congregation, renounced his reckless ways, and with a
defiance of the world that among the righteous awaked applause, he came
forward and knelt at the mourners' bench. His religion "took," they
said, as if speaking of vaccination, and before long he entered the
pulpit, ready gently to crack the irreligious heads of former companions
still stubborn in the ways of iniquity.
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