The kindly preacher who most frequently visited the Ranger district as a revivalist would not knowingly have given needless pain to a fly. But, when wrought up to great tension by religious frenzy, he seemed to find delight in holding the frightened penitent spellbound, while he led him to the very brink of perdition, where he would hang him suspended, mentally, as by a hair, over a liquid lake of fire and brimstone, with the blue blazes shooting, like tongues of forked lightning, beneath his writhing body; while overhead, looking on, sat his Heavenly Father, as a benignant and affectionate Deity, pictured to the speaker's imagination, nevertheless, as waiting with scythe in hand to snip that hair.
"I can't see a bit of logic in any of it!" exclaimed Jean Ranger, as she and Mary, accompanied by Hal, were returning home one night from such a meeting.
"God's ways are not our ways," sighed Mary, as she tripped over the frozen path under the denuded mapletrees, where night owls hooted and wild turkeys slept.
Harry laughed immoderately. "Jean, you 're right," he exclaimed. "I 'm going to get religion myself some day before I die, but I've got first to find a Heavenly Father who's better 'n I am. There's no preacher on top o' dirt can make me believe that the great Author of all Creation deserves the awful character they 're giving Him at the schoolhouse!"
"Don't blaspheme, Hal. It's wicked!" said Mary.
"I 'm not blaspheming; I 'm defending God!" retorted Hal.
You used to be a sensible girl, Mame," said Jean;
and you could then see the ridiculous side of all this excitement just as Hal and I now see it. But you 're in love with the preacher now, and that has turned your head."
Jean was cold and sleepy and cross; but she did not mean to be unkind, and on reflection added, "Forgive me, sister dear. I was only in fun. I have no right to
