The preacher turned suddenly and glanced at the colonel with furious eyes set in an ashy face.

“If this is the flouting and jeering of the Ungodly and Dissolute,” he screamed, “woe to you!  I say—­woe to you!  What have such as you to do with my previous state of unregeneracy?”

“Nothing,” said the colonel blandly, “unless that state were also the state of Arkansas!  Then, sir, as a former member of the Arkansas bar—­I might be able to assist your memory—­and—­er—­even corroborate your confession.”

But here the enthusiastic adherents of the preacher, vaguely conscious of some danger to their idol, gathered threateningly round the platform from which he had promptly leaped into their midst, leaving the colonel alone, to face the sea of angry upturned faces.  But that gallant warrior never altered his characteristic pose.  Behind him loomed the reputation of the dozen duels he had fought, the gold-headed stick on which he leaned was believed to contain eighteen inches of shining steel—­and the people of Laurel Spring had discretion.

He smiled suavely, stepped jauntily down, and made his way to the entrance without molestation.

But here he was met by Blair and Slocum, and a dozen eager questions:—­

“What was it?” “What had he done?” “Who was he?”

“A blank shyster, who had swindled the widows and orphans in Arkansas and escaped from jail.”

“And his name isn’t Brown?”

“No,” said the colonel curtly.

“What is it?”

“That is a matter which concerns only myself and him, sir,” said the colonel loftily; “but for which I am—­er—­personally responsible.”

A wild idea took possession of Blair.

“And you say he was a noted desperado?” he said with nervous hesitation.

The colonel glared.

“Desperado, sir!  Never!  Blank it all!—­a mean, psalm-singing, crawling, sneak thief!”

And Blair felt relieved without knowing exactly why.

The next day it was known that the preacher, Gabriel Brown, had left
Laurel Spring on an urgent “Gospel call” elsewhere.

Colonel Starbottle returned that night with his friends to the county town.  Strange to say, a majority of the audience had not grasped the full significance of the colonel’s unseemly interruption, and those who had, as partisans, kept it quiet.  Blair, tortured by doubt, had a new delicacy added to his hesitation, which left him helpless until the widow should take the initiative in explanation.

A sudden summons from his patient at the loggers’ camp the next day brought him again to the fateful redwoods.  But he was vexed and mystified to find, on arriving at the camp, that he had been made the victim of some stupid blunder, and that no message had been sent from there.  He was returning abstractedly through the woods when he was amazed at seeing at a little distance before him the flutter of Mrs. MacGlowrie’s well-known dark green riding habit and the figure of the lady herself.  Her dog was not with her, neither was the revival preacher—­or he might have thought the whole vision a trick of his memory.  But she slackened her pace, and he was obliged to rein up abreast of her in some confusion.