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After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear, cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of the fields.

Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked briskly toward it, Herman’s description of it came to his mind.

As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.

Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of the Man of Galilee–a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and depravity of man.

As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.

His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.

His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages. He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against woman and against God.

As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain and evidence of vandalism.

“Cheerful prospect, isn’t it?”

Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes. His pale face was sweet and solemn.

“Oh, how these people need Christ!”

Herman turned away. “They need killing–about two dozen of ’em. I’d like to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn’t miss the old man, you bet!” he added, with cordial resentment.

Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.

“Well, now, Stacey, I guess you’ll need to move. I had another session with the old man, but he won’t give in, so I’m off for Chicago. Mother’s brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the other side, will take you in. I guess we’d better go right down now and see about it. I’ve said good-by to the old man–for good this time; we didn’t shake hands, either,” he said, as they started down the road together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden under his laughing exterior.

Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen’s house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George read the Popular Science, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, and the Open Court, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals. He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach the school; beyond that he did not care to go.

He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the sitting-room stove.