The Quickening   By: Francis Lynde (1856-1930)

THE QUICKENING

By

FRANCIS LYNDE Author of The Grafters, The Master of Appleby, etc., etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E.M. ASHE

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1906 Francis Lynde

March

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N.Y.

To My Mother

CHAPTER PAGE

I Bethesda 1

II The Cedars of Lebanon 11

III Of the Fathers Upon the Children 21

IV The Newer Exodus 25

V The Dabneys of Deer Trace 32

VI Blue Blood and Red 44

VII The Prayer of the Righteous 57

VIII The Backslider 65

IX The Race to the Swift 75

X The Shadow of the Rock 90

XI The Trumpet Call 99

XII The Iron in the Forge Fire 107

XIII A Sister of Charity 116

XIV On Jordan's Bank 124

XV Noël 140

XVI The Bubble, Reputation 145

XVII Absalom, My Son! 160

XVIII The Awakening 172

XIX Issachar 188

XX Dry Wells 201

XXI Gilgal 216

XXII Love 226

XXIII Tarred Ropes 242

XXIV The Under Depths 255

XXV The Plow in the Furrow 265

XXVI As With a Mantle 279

XXVII Swept and Garnished 294

XXVIII The Burden of Habakkuk 306

XXIX As Brutes That Perish 319

XXX Through a Glass Darkly 331

XXXI The Net of the Fowler 338

XXXII Whoso Diggeth a Pit 347

XXXIII The Wine Press of Wrath 357

XXXIV The Smoke of the Furnace 366

XXXV A Soul in Shackles 378

XXXVI Free Among the Dead 387

XXXVII Whose Yesterdays Look Backward 399

THE QUICKENING

I

BETHESDA

The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts, of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the field to use Brother Crafts' own word was white to the harvest.

Little Zoar, the square, weather tinged wooden church at the head of the valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from the pike in a grove of young pines. By half past six of the June evening the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.

Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time twelve year old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike, had reached the church house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily in the wagon boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds the present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region round about.

"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother in law?" asked a tall, flat chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.