"Let us go back to the house," she said. "They will wonder what has
become of us."
Jim and Mrs. Mayfield were coming down the hill. The preacher, too, had
for the most part been silent, though not in reverie, but in a constant
struggle. Once he said to her: "Ma'm, I can't get it out of my head that
you are makin' fun of me."
"I make fun of you, Mr. Reverend? I admit that in the past my heart was
gayer than wise, but there never was a time when I could have made fun
of you."
Slowly they walked down the hill and he pondered over what she had said,
but a simple heart is often a suspicious heart; rustic faith is afraid
of itself, and he did not believe her. He was not wise enough to see
that in her eye he was a moral Hercules. He did not know that in his
great strength, in his very awkwardness, there was a fascination for
this woman who had drunk wine from a golden goblet and found it bitter.
On every creed there are dark spots, and in his devotion to his calling
he was afraid that she had come to him as a temptation, to lead him
away from the work of saving souls.
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