University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
ENGAGEMENT.

YOU do not like Morton in his vacillating state of
mind as he rides toward Salt Fork, weighing
considerations of right and wrong, of duty and disinclination,
in the balance. He is not an epic hero, for
epic heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by
intuition just what is right, or they are like Milton's
Satan, unencumbered with a sense of duty. But Morton
was neither infallible nor a devil. A man of sensitive
conscience cannot, even by accident, break a
woman's heart without compunction.

When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met
by Burchard, now sheriff of the county, and warned
that he would be attacked. Burchard begged him to
turn back. Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice
and time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been
under such obligations to him, and had not been
touched by this new evidence of his friendship. But
Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his life.

“I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard,”
he said, “and I will do it or die.”

Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could
not get rid of his love affair. He was touched to find
lying on the desk in the school-house a little unsigned

billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting, uttering a warning
similar to that just given by Burchard.

It was with some tremor that he looked round, in
the dim light of two candles, upon the turbulent faces
between him and the door. His prayer and singing
were a little faint. But when once he began to preach,
his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice
rose above all the shuffling sounds of disorder. The
interruptions, however, soon became so distinct that he
dared not any longer ignore them. Then he paused
in his discourse and looked at the rioters steadily.

“You think you will scare me. It is my business
to rebuke sin. I tell you that you are a set of ungodly
ruffians and law breakers. I tell you neighbors here
that they are miserable cowards. They let lawless men
trample on them. I say, shame on them! They ought
to organize and arrest you if it cost their lives.”

Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a
horse-pistol. Morton turned pale; but something in his
warm, Irish blood impelled him to proceed. “I called
you ruffians awhile ago,” he said, huskily. “Now I
tell you that you are cut-throats. If you kill me here
to-night, I will show your neighbors that it is better
to die like a man than to live like a coward. The
law will yet be put in force whether you kill me or not.
There are some of you that would belong to Micajah
Harp's gang of robbers if you dared. But you are afraid;
and so you only give information and help to those
who are no worse, only a little braver than you are.”

Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him
too far. He now saw that his denunciation had degenerated

into a taunt, and this taunt had provoked
his enemies beyond measure. He had been foolhardy;
for what good could it do for him to throw away his life
in a row? There was
murder in the eyes of the
ruffians. Half-a-dozen
pistols were cocked in
quick succession and he
caught the glitter of
knives. A hasty consultation was taking place in the
back part of the room, and the few Methodists near him
huddled together like sheep. If he intended to save his
life there was no time to spare. The address and presence
of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood
did not fail him now. It would not do to seem to quail.
Without lowering his fiercely indignant tone, he raised
his right hand and demanded that honest citizens
should rally to his support and put down the riot.
His descending hand knocked one of the two candles
from the pulpit in the most accidental way in the
world. Starting back suddenly, he managed to upset
and extinguish the other just at the instant when the
infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon
him. The room was thus made totally dark. Morton
plunged into the on-coming crowd. Twice he was
seized and interrogated, but he changed his voice and
avoided detection. When at last the crowd gave up
the search and began to leave the house, he drifted
with them into the outer darkness and rain. Once
upon Dolly he was safe from any pursuit.

When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond
danger, Morton was in better spirits than at any time
since the elder's solemn talk on the preceding Saturday.
He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and of
a sense of triumph. So bold a speech, and so masterly
an escape as he had made could not but demoralize
men like the Salt Forkers. He laughed a little at
himself for talking about dying and then running away,
but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity
to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression
of these lawless gangs. He would himself head a party
against them if necessary.

This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression

as his mind reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's
writing. How thoughtful in her to send it! How
delicate she was in not signing it! How forgiving
must her temper be! What a stupid wretch he was to
attract her affection, and now what a perverse soul
he was to break her devoted heart!

This was the light in which Morton saw the situation.
A more suspicious man might have reasoned
that Ann Eliza probably knew no more of Goodwin's
peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the neighboring
country, and that her note was a gratuitous
thrusting of herself on his attention. A suspicious person
would have reasoned that her delicacy in not
signing the note was only a pretense, since Morton
had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in
the affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her.
But Morton was not suspicious. How could he be
suspicious of one upon whom the Lord had so manifestly
poured out his Spirit? Besides, the suspicious
view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann
Eliza did love Morton almost to distraction, and had
entertained the liveliest apprehensions of his peril at
Salt Fork.

But with however much gratitude he might regard
Ann Eliza's action, Morton Goodwin could not quite
bring himself to decide on marriage. He could not
help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had
discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house,
nor could he help contrasting that strong love with
the feebleness of the best affection he could muster for
the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann Eliza Meacham.

But as he proceeded round the circuit it became
more and more evident to Morton that he had suffered
in reputation by his cool treatment of Miss Meacham.
Elderly people love romance, and they could not forgive
him for not bringing the story out in the way
they wished. They felt that nothing could be so
appropriate as the marriage of a popular preacher with
so zealous a woman. It was a shock to their sense of
poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the
only fitting denouement. So that between people who
were disappointed at the come-out, and young men
who were jealous of the general popularity of the
youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had visibly
declined. Nevertheless there was quite a party of
young women who approved of his course. He had
found the minx out at last!

One of the results of the Methodist circuit system,
with its great quarterly meetings, was the bringing of
people scattered over a wide region into a sort of
organic unity and a community of feeling. It widened
the horizon. It was a curious and, doubtless, also a
beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of
half-civilized territory called Jenkinsville circuit there
was now a common topic for gossip and discussion.
When Morton reached the very northernmost of his
forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped
from the excitement.

“Brother Goodwin,” said Sister Sharp, as they sat
at breakfast, “whatever folks may say, I am sure you
had a perfect right to give up Sister Meacham. A
man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her

out. I don't think it would take a smart man like
you long to find out that Sister Meacham isn't all she
pretends to be. I have heard some things about her
standing in Pennsylvania. I guess you found them
out.”

“I never meant to marry Sister Meacham,” said
Morton, as soon as he could recover from the shock,
and interrupt the stream of Sister Sharp's talk.

“Everybody thought you did.”

“Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding
out anything, I can tell you that Sister Meacham is, I
believe, one of the best and most useful Christians in
the world.”

“That's what everybody thought,” replied the other,
maliciously, “until you quit off going with her so suddenly.
People have thought different since.”

This shot took effect. Morton could bear that
people should slander him. But, behold! a crop of
slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely to grow out
of his mistake. In the midst of a most unheroic and,
as it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and
perplexity, he came at last to Mount Zion meeting-house.
It was here that Ann Eliza belonged, and
here he must decide whether he would still leave her
to suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of
his own good name, or make a marriage which, to
those wiser than he, seemed in every way advisable.
Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day. When
once the benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved
to free himself from remorse and obloquy by
the only honorable course. He would ride over to

Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself
to Ann Eliza.

Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister
Meacham's true character that made him hesitate?
Or was it that a pure-hearted man always shrinks from
marriage without love? He reined his horse at the
road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed
the hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion
class, instead of receiving Sister Sims's welcome. He
intended by this means to postpone his decision till
afternoon.

Out of the frying-pan into the fire! The leader
took Brother Goodwin aside and informed him that
Sister Ann Eliza was very ill. She might never
recover. It was understood that she was slowly dying
of a broken heart.

Morton could bear no more. To have made so
faithful a person, who had even interfered to save
his life, suffer in her spirit was bad enough; to have
brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her outright
was ingratitude and murder. He wondered at
his own stupidity and wickedness. He rode in haste
to Sister Sims's. Ann Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously
ill, and was ill more of a malarious fever
than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and
disappointment had much to do with it. Morton,
convinced that he was the author of her woes, felt
more tenderness to her in her emaciation than he had
ever felt toward her in her beauty. He could not
profess a great deal of love, so he contented himself
with expressing his gratitude for the Salt Fork warning.

Explanations about the past were awkward, but
fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk
much on exciting subjects. Besides, she did not seem
to be very exacting. Morton's offer of marriage was
accepted with a readiness that annoyed him. When
he rode away to his next appointment, he did not
feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he
had expected to. He could not get rid of a thought
that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an
offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on
such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted. And yet, one
must not expect all qualities in one person. What
could be finer than Ann Eliza's lustrous piety? She
was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second Mrs.
Fletcher, maybe. And how much she must love him
to pine away thus! And how forgiving she was!