Not that he needed to make any special plans for being with Jeannette Shenk; of late he had found the half hour drive down to the old farm the prelude to a pleasant evening.  Sometimes he would make the round trip twice, running out to bring Jeanette into town, when something was going on, and taking her home afterward in the immemorial fashion.

As J.W. turned to the church yard lane leading up to the old horseshed, he noticed that there were only two cars there besides his own—­and one old-time sidebar buggy, battered and mud-bedaubed, with a decrepit and dejected-looking gray mare between the shafts.

It was time for meeting, and he contrasted to-day’s emptiness of the long sheds with the crowding vehicles of his childhood memories.  In those days so tightly were buggies and surries and democrats, and even spring wagons and an occasional sulky wedged into the space, that it was nothing unusual for the sermon to be interrupted by an uproar in the sheds, when some peevish horse attempted to set its teeth in the neck of a neighbor, with a resultant squealing and plunging, a cramping of wheels and a rattle of harness which could neutralize the most vociferous circuit rider’s eloquence.

At the door, J.W. fell in with the little group of men, who, according to ancient custom, had waited in the yard for the announcement of the first hymn before ending their talk of crops and roads and stock, and joining the women and children within.

Inside the contrast with the older day was even more striking.  The church, small as it was, seemed almost empty.  The Shenks were there, including Jeannette, as J.W. promptly managed to observe.  Father Foltz and his middle-aged daughter stood in their accustomed place; they had come in the venerable sidebar buggy, just as for two decades past.  Mother Foltz hadn’t been out of the house in years, and among J.W.’s earliest recollections were those of the cottage prayer meetings that he had attended with his father in Mrs. Foltz’s speckless sickroom.  Then there were the four Newells, and Mrs. Bellamy, and Mr. and Mrs. Haggard with their two little girls, and a few people J.W. did not know—­perhaps twenty-five altogether.  No wonder the preacher was disheartened, and preached a flavorless sermon.

Where were the boys and girls of even a dozen years ago? where the children who began their Sunday school career in the little recess back of the curtain? and where the whole families that once filled the place?  Surely, old Deep Creek Church had fallen on evil days.

It was a dismal service, with its dreary sermon and its tuneless hymns.  After the benediction J.W. shook hands with the preacher, whom he knew slightly, and exchanged greetings with all the old friends.

“Well, John Wesley,” said Father Foltz, with glum garrulity, “this ain’t the church you used to know when you was little.  I mind in them times when you folks lived on the farm how we thought we’d have to enlarge the meetinghouse.  But it’s a good thing we never done it.  There’s room enough now,” and the old man indulged in a mirthless, toothless grimace.