Eben Bell came in with an armful of wood and banged it cheerfully down in the box behind the glowing Waterloo stove, which was coloring the heart of the little kitchen's gloom with tremulous, rose-red whirls of light.
"There, sis, that's the last chore on my list. Bob's milking. Nothing more for me to do but put on my white collar for meeting. Avonlea is more than lively since the evangelist came, ain't it, though!"
Mollie Bell nodded. She was curling her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the wall and distorted her round, pink-and-white face into a caricature.
"Wonder who'll stand up to-night," said Eben reflectively, sitting down on the edge of the wood-box. "There ain't many sinners left in Avonlea—only a few hardened chaps like myself."
"You shouldn't talk like that," said Mollie . "What if father heard you?"
"Father wouldn't hear me if I shouted it in his ear," returned Eben. "He goes around, these days, like a man in a dream and a bad dream at that. Father has always been a good man. What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know," said Mollie, dropping her voice. "Mother is dreadfully worried over him. And everybody is talking, Eb. It just makes me squirm. Jane Fletcher asked me last night why father never testified, and him one of the elders. She said the minister was about it. I felt my face getting red."
"Why didn't you tell her it was no business of hers?" said Eben angrily. "Old Flora Jane had better mind her own business."
"But all the folks are talking about it, Eb. And mother is her heart out over it. Father has never acted like himself since these meetings began. He just goes there night after night, and sits like a mummy, with his head down. And almost everybody else in Avonlea has testified."
"Oh, no, there's lots haven't," said Eben. "Matthew Cuthbert never has, nor Uncle Elisha, nor any of the Whites."
"But everybody knows they don't believe in getting up and testifying, so nobody wonders when they don't. Besides," Mollie laughed—"Matthew could never get a word out in public, if he did believe in it. He'd be too shy. But," she added with a sigh, "it isn't that way with father. He believes in , so people wonder why he doesn't get up. Why, even old Josiah Sloane gets up every night."
"With his whiskers sticking out every which way, and his hair ditto," interjected the graceless Eben.
"When the minister calls for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame," sighed Mollie. "If father would get up just once!"
Miriam Bell entered the kitchen. She was ready for the meeting, to which Major Spencer was to take her. She was a tall, pale girl, with a serious face, and dark, thoughtful eyes, totally unlike Mollie. She had "come under conviction" during the meetings, and had stood up for prayer and testimony several times. The evangelist thought her very spiritual. She heard Mollie's concluding sentence and reprovingly.
"You shouldn't criticize your father, Mollie. It isn't for you to judge him."
Eben had hastily slipped out. He was afraid Miriam would begin talking religion to him if he stayed. He had with difficulty escaped from an by Robert in the cow-stable. There was no peace in Avonlea for the unregenerate, he reflected. Robert and Miriam had both "come out," and Mollie was on the .
"Dad and I are the black sheep of the family," he said, with a laugh, for which he at once felt guilty. Eben had been brought up with a strict for all religious matters. On the surface he might sometimes laugh at them, but the deeps troubled him whenever he did so.
Indoors, Miriam touched her younger sister's shoulder and looked at her affectionately.
"Won't you decide to-night, Mollie?" she asked, in a voice tremulous with emotion.
Mollie and turned her face away uncomfortably. She did not know what answer to make, and was glad that a of bells outside saved her the necessity of replying.
"There's your beau, Miriam," she said, as she into the sitting room.
Soon after, Eben brought the family pung and his red to the door for Mollie. He had not as yet to the dignity of a cutter of his own. That was for his elder brother, Robert, who presently came out in his new fur coat and drove dashingly away with bells and glitter.
"Thinks he's the people," remarked Eben, with a fraternal grin.
The rich winter was purpling over the white world as they drove down the lane under the over-arching wild cherry trees that glittered with gemmy hoar-frost. The snow creaked and crisped under the runners. A wind was keening in the leafless dogwoods. Over the trees the sky was a of silver, with a lucent star or two on the slope of the west. Earth-stars gleamed warmly out here and there, where homesteads were tucked away in their or of birch.
"The church will be jammed to-night," said Eben. "It's so fine that folks will come from near and far. Guess it'll be exciting."
"If only father would testify!" sighed Mollie, from the bottom of the pung, where she was snuggled amid furs and straw. "Miriam can say what she likes, but I do feel as if we were all disgraced. It sends a creep all over me to hear Mr. Bentley say, 'Now, isn't there one more to say a word for Jesus?' and look right over at father."
Eben his mare with his whip, and she broke into a . The silence was filled with a faint, fairy-like melody from afar down the road where a pungful of young folks from White Sands were singing on their way to meeting.
"Look here, Mollie," said Eben awkwardly at last, "are you going to stand up for prayers to-night?"
"I—I can't as long as father acts this way," answered Mollie, in a choked voice. "I—I want to, Eb, and Mirry and Bob want me to, but I can't. I do hope that the evangelist won't come and talk to me special to-night. I always feels as if I was being pulled two different ways, when he does."
Back in the kitchen at home Mrs. Bell was waiting for her husband to bring the horse to the door. She was a slight, dark-eyed little woman, with thin, vivid-red cheeks. From out of the swathings in which she had wrapped her , her face gleamed sad and troubled. Now and then she sighed heavily.
The cat came to her from under the stove, languidly stretching himself, and yawning until all the red of his mouth and throat was revealed. At the moment he had an uncanny resemblance to Elder Joseph Blewett of White Sands—Roaring Joe, the irreverent boys called him—when he grew excited and shouted. Mrs. Bell saw it—and then reproached herself for the sacrilege.
"But it's no wonder I've wicked thoughts," she said, wearily. "I'm that worried I ain't rightly myself. If he would only tell me what the trouble is, maybe I could help him. At any rate, I'd KNOW. It hurts me so to see him going about, day after day, with his head hanging and that look on his face, as if he had something fearful on his conscience—him that never harmed a living soul. And then the way he and mutters in his sleep! He has always lived a just, upright life. He hasn't no right to go on like this, disgracing his family."
Mrs. Bell's angry was cut short by the sleigh at the door. Her husband in his busy, iron-gray head and said, "Now, mother." He helped her into the sleigh, tucked the rugs warmly around her, and put a hot brick at her feet. His hurt her. It was all for her material comfort. It did not matter to him what mental agony she might suffer over his strange attitude. For the first time in their married life Mary Bell felt against her husband.
They drove along in silence, past the snow-powdered hedges of spruce, and under the arches of the forest roadways. They were late, and a great stillness was over all the land. David Bell never spoke. All his usual cheerful talkativeness had disappeared since the meetings had begun in Avonlea. From the first he had gone about as a man over whom some strange is , seemingly to all that might be said or thought of him in his own family or in the church. Mary Bell thought she would go out of her mind if her husband continued to act in this way. Her reflections were bitter and as they sped along through the glittering night of the winter's prime.
"I don't get one bit of good out of the meetings," she thought resentfully. "There ain't any peace or joy for me, not even in testifying myself, when David sits there like a stick or stone. If he'd been opposed to the revivalist coming here, like old Uncle Jerry, or if he didn't believe in public testimony, I wouldn't mind. I'd understand. But, as it is, I feel dreadful ."
Revival meetings had never been held in Avonlea before. "Uncle" Jerry MacPherson, who was the local authority in church matters, taking precedence of even the minister, had been uncompromisingly opposed to them. He was a stern, deeply religious Scotchman, with a horror of the emotional form of religion. As long as Uncle Jerry's spare, form and deeply-graved square-jawed face filled his accustomed corner by the northwest window of Avonlea church no revivalist might venture therein, although the majority of the congregation, including the minister, would have welcomed one warmly.
But now Uncle Jerry was sleeping peacefully under the grasses and white snows of the burying ground, and, if dead people ever do turn in their graves, Uncle Jerry might well have turned in his when the revivalist came to Avonlea church, and there followed the emotional services, public , and religious excitement which the old man's sturdy soul had always .
Avonlea was a good field for an evangelist. The . Geoffrey Mountain, who came to assist the Avonlea minister in revivifying the dry bones thereof, knew this and reveled in the knowledge. It was not often that such a parish could be found nowadays, with scores of impressionable, unspoiled souls on which could play skillfully, as a master on a mighty organ, until every note in them thrilled to life and . The Rev. Geoffrey Mountain was a good man; of the earth, earthy, to be sure, but with an unquestionable of belief and purpose which went far to counterbalance the sensationalism of some of his methods.
He was large and handsome, with a marvelously sweet and winning voice—a voice that could melt into tenderness, or into appeal and , or ring like a calling to battle.
His frequent grammatical errors, and into vulgarity, counted for nothing against its cha............