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“Who was she?”

“Miss Byrne. She teaches at the Brick School.”

“Yes, yes. Of course she does. Fine young lady,” he said, studying Mauney with much lifting of his brows and pouting of his lips. “But you’re too young, Bard. Why don’t you get somebody your own age?”

“Oh,” Mauney said quickly, while his face flushed; “She’s probably got a beau. It isn’t me, anyway, doctor.”

Horne, greatly amused at the emotional perturbation of his patient, chuckled, while his black eyes sparkled.

“Get along with you, Bard!” he said, “Get along home with you and don’t forget to come up on Saturday, mind!”

The revival meetings became the talk of the countryside. Beulah, composed for the most part of retired farmers, had unusual leisure in which to think—a leisure captured by the glamor of religion, which was the strongest local influence. Although the village was a century old it had preserved, with remarkable success, the puritanism of the pioneer period, partly because it enjoyed so little touch with the commercial energies of the nation at large, and partly because the local churches had remained diligent in spiritual service. But in a population so uniformly composed of idle folk, the general view-point lay itself open to become biased. There was too much emphasis on the ghostly estate and too little on the need of practical endeavor. Beulah had forgotten long since that the Church must have its lost world, else it becomes unnecessary, and to the average citizen, lulled as he was by surfeit of beatific meditation, the board sidewalks had begun to take on an aureate tinge, the houses, a pearly lustre. The spiritual concern of the religiously eager Beulahite had in it, unfortunately, no concept of national character, but was pointed sharply at the individual. His sense of personal security was only less unhealthy than his over-bearing interest in the soul welfare of his neighbor. Saved by repeated redemptions himself, he remained strangely skeptical of the validity of the phenomenon in others. Hence, at fairly regular intervals, a general village consciousness of sin developed, becoming insistently stronger until it found its logical expression—the revival meeting.