who wept and shouted with him.  Tired and discontented housewives found their vague sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their “unregenerate” state; the lazy country youths felt that the frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being “convicted of sin.”  The mourners’ bench was crowded with wildly emulating sinners.  Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of amusement and contempt.  At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the shoulder:  “Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don’t he, Doctor?” said Jim.

“So it seems,” said Blair dryly.

“You’re one o’ them scientific fellers that look inter things—­what do you allow it is?”

The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his lips.  He had learned caution in that neighborhood.  “I couldn’t say,” he said indifferently.

“’Tain’t no religion,” said Slocum emphatically; “it’s jest pure fas’nation.  Did ye look at his eye?  It’s like a rattlesnake’s, and them wimmin are like birds.  They’re frightened of him—­but they hev to do jest what he ‘wills’ ’em.  That’s how he skeert the widder the other day.”

The doctor was alert and on fire at once.  “Scared the widow?” he repeated indignantly.

“Yes.  You know how she swooned away.  Well, sir, me and that preacher, Brown, was the only one in that dinin’ room at the time.  The widder opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that thar preacher give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of queer light come in his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder fluttered and flopped down in the passage outside, like a bird!  And he crawled away like a snake, and never said a word!  My belief is that either he hadn’t time to turn on the hull influence, or else she, bein’ smart, got the door shut betwixt her and it in time!  Otherwise, sure as you’re born, she’d hev been floppin’ and crawlin’ and sobbin’ arter him—­jist like them critters we’ve left.”

“Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they’ll lynch you,” said the doctor, with a laugh.  “Mrs. MacGlowrie simply had an attack of faintness from some overexertion, that’s all.”

Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away.  Mrs. MacGlowrie had evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum’s exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story.  He did not share the man’s superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism.  Yet even then, the widow’s action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger.  A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending over one of her favorite flower beds.  The high fence partially concealed him from view, and she evidently believed herself alone.  Perhaps that was why she suddenly raised herself from her task, put back her straying hair with a weary,