Chapters (72)
- Front Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- THE FIRST YEAR
- CHAPTER 1
- CHAPTER 2
- CHAPTER 3
- CHAPTER 4
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- CHAPTER 7
- CHAPTER 8
- CHAPTER 9
- CHAPTER 10
- CHAPTER 11
- CHAPTER 12
- THE SECOND YEAR
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14
- CHAPTER 15
- CHAPTER 16
- CHAPTER 17
- CHAPTER 18
- CHAPTER 19
- CHAPTER 20
- CHAPTER 21
- CHAPTER 22
- THE THIRD YEAR
- CHAPTER 23
- CHAPTER 24
- CHAPTER 25
- CHAPTER 26
- THE FOURTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 27
- CHAPTER 28
- CHAPTER 29
- CHAPTER 30
- CHAPTER 31
- CHAPTER 32
- THE FIFTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 33
- CHAPTER 34
- THE SIXTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 35
- CHAPTER 36
- CHAPTER 37
- THE SEVENTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 38
- CHAPTER 39
- CHAPTER 40
- CHAPTER 41
- CHAPTER 42
- CHAPTER 43
- THE EIGHTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 44
- CHAPTER 45
- CHAPTER 46
- THE NINTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 47
- CHAPTER 48
- THE TENTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 49
- CHAPTER 50
- CHAPTER 51
- CHAPTER 52
- THE ELEVENTH YEAR
- CHAPTER 53
- CHAPTER 54
- CHAPTER 55
- About the Author
- Back Cover
Rae contributed a bit to the comedy of living that summer by having a frightful attack of schoolgirl veal love, the object of which was a young evangelist who was holding revival meetings in Mr. Jonas Monkman’s big barn. He did not approve of “organized churches” and these services were in the nature of a free-for-all and, being very lively of their kind, attracted crowds, some of whom came to scoff and remained to pray. For it could not be denied that the young preacher had a very marked power for stirring the emotions of his hearers to concert pitch. He had an exceedingly handsome, marble-white face with rather too large, too soft, too satiny brown eyes and long, crinkly, mahogany-hued hair, sweeping back in a mane from what Rae once incautiously said was “a noble brow,” and a remarkably caressing, wooing voice, expressive of everything. The teenagers went down like ninepins before him. A choir was collected, consisting of everybody in the two Glens who could be persuaded to function. Rae, who sang sweetly, was leading soprano, looking like the very rose of song as she caroled with her eyes turned heavenward…or at least towards the banners of cobwebs hanging from the roof of the barn. She went every night, gave up teasing to be allowed to wear knickerbockers around home, and discarded costume earrings because the evangelist referred to jewelry as “gauds…all gauds.” She was tormented terribly because of her “case” on the preacher, but she gave as good as she got and nobody except Pat thought it was anything but a passing crush. For that matter, all the girls were more or less in love with him and it was difficult to tell where love left off and religion began, as Elder Robinson remarked sarcastically. But Elder Robinson did not approve of the revivals conducted by itinerant evangelists…“go-preachers” he called them. And Rae and her ilk considered Elder Robinson a hide-bound old fossil. Even when Jedidiah Madison of Silverbridge, who hadn’t been inside of a church for years, wandered into the barn one night and was saved in three minutes Elder Robinson was still incredulous of any good thing. “Let us see if it lasts,” he was reported to have said…and added that he had just been reading of a very successful evangelist who had turned out to be a bank bandit. Pat had no fear that Mr. Wheeler was a bandit but she detested him and was as puzzled as alarmed over Rae’s infatuation.