town, but of late years had settled more and more into Panola; and to Fredonia every Sunday we went, the ladies and little girls in their brightest gowns, the gentlemen at their best, the little boys very stiff and cautioned to be careful. And there we sat and heard him, like a flowering meadow at the foot of an oak.

Part of the time Parson Bates served as conductor. The first three days of the week, in fact, he was on the railroad from Memphis in Tennessee to Grenada in Mississippi, a railroad of which my grandfather was chief owner and his brother-in-law, Colonel White, of the South Carolina Whites, was President. All this was long ago, far back in the early 'fifties in Mississippi— 1854, to be exact. There was only one engine on this line; it was called after my grandfather; on it was printed in great gilt letters the name Hugh McGehee.

I am afraid Parson Bates in this enterprise combined the railroad with the evangelists, drove Elijah's chariot with steam. I know that once or twice he ferreted out runaway couples among his passengers, reproved them and sent them back to their parents, and then talked and bullied their parents into consenting to a wedding. One of these couples once, as soon as they boarded the train, had given what seemed to be good reasons for running away, and for them Parson Bates stopped the train and bought a license, and married them on the spot; and when the President of the road, Colonel White, who happened to be aboard, inquired about the delay, Bates said nothing, but collected the fare and the preacher's wedding fee from the couple and turned to Colonel White: "Here's my money," he said, “and

This same President he came near putting off the train once for refusing to throw away his cigar; smoking was prohibited on the Bates trains. I never heard what the other conductors did about it.

The real reason, I suppose, for Parson Bates's restriction of his labors to the region around Heaven Trees was his devotion to my Uncle George. It was an odd but strong friendship that held between these two and had begun with one of my uncle's practical jokes. On the lawns of Heaven Trees there was one of those

buildings that went with most Southern houses, known as the office. From it the business of the estate was supposed to be transacted; but since there was rarely any business beyond conversation of diverse kinds, the office became a guest room to be used for special visitors or in case of overcrowding. When Parson Bates came first to preach at Fredonia, he was Uncle George's guest and was established, as visiting preachers always were, in the office. On that first night my uncle, to try the man that had come to better us and to give himself a laugh as well, had a skeleton from his student days, a hideous contraption of bones and wires, so placed above the office door that when the knob was turned and the door opened, the thing fell forward upon the opener. The long, jointed arms were to fall in a close embrace about the preacher and we were to see what happened. What happened was a yell and some honest cries of fright and strong Biblical oaths, and afterward some laughter and fellowship; and thus began the friendship of these two.

My Uncle George delighted in Parson Bates. He liked his strong mind and his strong outlines of character. He liked the way Parson Bates brought his wits and the deviltries of his fancy to the uses of his holy mission, brought to the service of religion actions, figures of speech, inventions and demonstrations, that made him a legend and a county myth long before his end. He enjoyed in Bates that quality, so dear to the provinces, where it takes the place of art and great affairs, of illustrating life, of serving as a walking personification of human ideas, presentments and instincts.

As for my Aunt Martha, my Uncle George's wife, she, perhaps, saw sometimes a little too much of Parson Bates. What she thought of him precisely I never knew. Sometimes, I fancy, she could have gone without the extra roaring in the house, for she already had Miss Mary Cherry, spinster and friend of the family, as another visitor, not only arguing with Bates and Uncle George but sitting up in her room and roaring out hymns by the hour. But my aunt knew that Parson Bates was not only a friend to my Uncle George but good for him as well. He could keep my uncle from drinking as much as he might have drunk otherwise, and this my aunt knew to be a wise thing. She had certainly known

Parson Bates as long, except for a few months, as she had known her husband himself, as we shall see.

"If Georgia ever marries," my Uncle George said, talking of his daughter and young Charles Boardman, who were as sure to marry as dawn is to follow night, "if she should marry Charles,— and everything is possible," he added slyly,-"if Georgia marries, Bates shall marry them." And when Georgia asked why that was, my aunt explained:

"As soon as I consented to have your father, he began to talk about Bates. It was Bates this and Bates that. Bates must marry us. There was nobody like Bates. Bates had promised him long ago if he ever got married, Bates would perform the ceremony. Well, I thought, since Doctor Clay had set his heart

on it so

"You'd let Bates do it."

"Exactly, my dear. So I agreed and explained to the Bishop how it was. But the day before the wedding, Bates sent word that he was detained on railroad service and couldn't come. So we had the Bishop after all. But the next day we started on our wedding journey, and almost as soon as the train started I saw going down the aisle a lean man with red hair and a long black coat faded almost green. He was taking up the tickets and calling people by their names, Sam, Tom, Abner, Hugh, everything. Everyone seemed to know him. Then he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose like a trombone-you know how-”

"Still does," my uncle chuckled.

"Some one had stuck a whiskey flask in his hip pocket. 'Who on earth's that?' I asked Dr. Clay. 'Bates, that's Bates,' he said. 'Well,' I said, 'is it? It's a good thing he couldn't come last night, Dr. Clay!' I said, 'or you'd never've married me.' "Which is all moonshine," said my Uncle George.

The church at Fredonia, where Parson Bates preached on Sundays, was of brick with plaster columns across the porch and two huge doors leading inside. Here the light fell through high leaded windows over the plaster of the walls, the black beams and wainscoting, and the black pews, so high that you could see only the heads and bonnets of the congregation. In the gallery at the back a number of darkies sat, and from that place joined sometimes in

the singing, not too loud, and moaned a little in the prayers, the older ones among them saying "Amen!" now and then and "Praise be the Lord!" There was a cool quietness and pride dwelling everywhere; it did not seem the house of a very jealous God.

A wide gate led into the grounds of the church, set between heavy arbor vitæ trees, dark and pointed. The walk ran between box hedges which left a lane of sunshine down the midst of it. The pleasant vagueness of the scent from the box was in the air and mingled indistinguishably with the fragrance of the crêpe myrtles and syringas that were planted here and there.

How different it must have seemed to my Cousin Ellen, our little governess who had just come to Heaven Trees, how different it must have seemed to her that first Sunday she went, how different from the church at home in Pittsford, Vermont! She told me afterward of her Vermont Sunday and how she sat there in the Fredonia church, her ears far away from her heart,—though that was not her way of saying it,-thinking of Sunday at home, until Parson Bates startled her out of it. In Pittsford there had been no change going from outside the church to the inside. The soft light, the lifeless shadows, the hushed tone of things, of people and traffic, had made the whole world seem to be going or coming from church. In Pittsford, even the little Sunday dogs seem to go by with steady earnestness of purpose. This place where she had come now from Heaven Trees to worship in was different. Fredonia was more apart to itself in a bright world, and what went on outside seemed to matter less.

My Cousin Ellen kept seeing the little town of Pittsford, the rows of elm trees with their grey, quiet shade, the gentle mountain, the slender voices of the birds, the noiseless houses, not a piano going, nor a man, woman or child singing out a song. She thought of her uncle and aunt on their way to church, her uncle a little in advance, not very gallantly perhaps, and not giving her aunt his arm as Dr. Clay would have done to her Aunt Martha. Her uncle in his long black coat and polished gaiters; the family walking along with nothing to say to each other but now and then stopping to speak to one of the neighbors. Past the trout stream they had gone, on Sunday to be regarded as troutless, past the post office, now postless, to the white church beyond. Afterward

home again quietly, a little walk in the afternoon, a short service at night with more hymns. In Pittsford there had been no Sunday display of fineries. And she sat here now in her dress of purple silk with its slight, ungodly tightness in the waist. She thought of Henry.

Into this warm light my Cousin Ellen came again when the service was over. And I smile now to think of how that little face must have looked and what trouble or dismay or vague remoteness must have been in those gentle eyes, for she could not have been used to such power and volume in religion. If she had feared lest she fall into the sin of strayed thoughts, thinking of Pittsford and home when she should have heard the sermon at hand, she was mistaken; she had reckoned without her host if she had counted on any absent wandering among these reveries. Little she knew Parson Bates. She did not know that though he always smiled when he approached the dinner-table, where she had already seen him, he always frowned when he went into the pulpit, where now he was to confront her among the other sinners. He gave out the hymn in a voice like thunder, so that the congregation when they began to sing, however loud they hit it off, always sounded like mere cowed mortals lifting up their wail to an angry God. Then Parson Bates took his text and preached. He was one of those old-timers who lived a heavenly example and threatened hell.

Parson Bates had his moments of poetry, too, and what, I suppose, for his spirit, was a very serene and tranquil loveliness. He spoke of the golden censer in Heaven and the golden altar before the throne with golden horns upon it. And once, he said, when the Seventh Seal was opened, "There was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour"; which seemed to us quite a time in the midst of such violent offices as Parson Bates's.

He had some locusts, too, that he got from the Book of Revelations somewhere, which came out in smoke from the bottomless pit and were commanded not to hurt the grasses of the earth nor any green thing, nor any tree; but only those men who have not the Seal of God in their foreheads. The shape of these locusts was like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.