After this day, Draxy had a new hold on the people.  They had really felt very little surprise at her speaking to them as she did.  She had slowly and insensibly to herself grown into the same place which the Elder had had in their regard; the same in love and confidence, but higher in reverence, and admiration, for although she sympathized just as lovingly as he in all their feelings, they never for a moment ceased to feel that her nature was on a higher plane than his.  They could not have put this in words, but they felt it.

“Donno, how ‘tis,” they said, “but Mis’ Kinney, even when she’s closest to ye, an’ a doin’ for ye all the time, don’t seem just like a mortal woman.”

“It’s easy enough to know how ’tis,” replied Angy Plummer, once, in a moment of unguarded frankness, “Mis Kinney is a kind o’ daughter o’ God, somthin’ as Jesus Christ was His Son.  It’s just the way Jesus Christ used to go round among folks, ’s near ’s I can make out; ‘n’ I for one, don’t believe that God jest sent Him, once for all, ‘n’ haint never sent anybody else near us, all this time.  I reckon He’s a sendin’ down sons and daughters to us oftener ‘n’ we think.”

“Angy Plummer, I call that downright blasphemy,” exclaimed her mother.

“Well, call it what you’re a mind to,” retorted the crisp Angy.  “It’s what I believe.”

“‘Tis blasphemy though, to be sayin’ it to folks that can’t understand,” she muttered to herself as she left the room, “ef blasphemy means what Mis’ Kinney sez it does, to speak stupidly.”

Three years had passed.  The novelty of Draxy’s relation to her people had worn off.  The neighboring people had ceased to wonder and to talk; and the neighboring ministers had ceased to doubt and question.  Clairvend and she had a stout supporter in old Elder Williams, who was looked upon as a high authority throughout the region.  He always stayed at Reuben Miller’s house, when he came to the town, and his counsel and sympathy were invaluable to Draxy.  Sometimes he said jocosely, “I am the pastor of Brother Kinney’s old parish and Mis’ Kinney is my curate, and I wish everybody had as good an one.”

It finally grew to be Draxy’s custom to read one of her husband’s sermons in the forenoon, and to talk to the people informally in the afternoon.  Sometimes she wrote out what she wished to say, but usually she spoke without any notes.  She also wrote hymns which she read to them, and which the choir sometimes sang.  She was now fully imbued with the feeling that everything which she could do, belonged to her people.  Next to Reuben, they filled her heart; the sentiment was after all but an expanded and exalted motherhood.  Strangers sometimes came to Clairvend to hear her preach, for of course the fame of the beautiful white-robed woman-preacher could not be confined to her own village.  This always troubled Draxy very much.

“If we were not so far out of the world, I should have to give it up,” she said; “I know it is proper they should come; but it seems to me just as strange as if they were to walk into the study in the evening when I am teaching Reuby.  I can’t make it seem right; and when I see them writing down what I say, it just paralyzes me.”