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The Riddle Of The Rocks
by
“Who!” asked his wife, pausing in her task of picking up chips. He had spoken of them so familiarly that one might imagine they lived close by in the cove.
“An’ias an’ S’phira–them in the Bible ez war streck by lightnin’ fur lyin’,” he explained.
“I ‘member her,” she said. “S’phia, I calls her.”
“Waal, A’gusta, S’phira do me jes ez well,” he said, with the momentary sulkiness of one corrected. “Thar war a man along, though. An’ ‘pears ter me thar war powerful leetle jestice in thar takin’ off, ef Roger Purdee be ‘lowed ter stan’ up thar in the face o’ the meetin’ an’ lie so ez no yearthly critter in the worl’ could b’lieve him–‘ceptin’ Brother Jacob Page, ez ‘peared plumb out’n his head with religion, an’ got ter shoutin’ when this Purdee tuk ter tellin’ the law he read on them rocks–Moses’ tables, folks calls ’em–up yander in the mounting.”
He nodded upward toward the great looming range above them. His house was on a spur of the mountain, overshadowed by it; shielded. It was to him the Almoner of Fate. One by one it doled out the days, dawning from its summit; and thence, too, came the darkness and the glooms of night. One by one it liberated from the enmeshments of its tangled wooded heights the constellations to gladden the eye and lure the fancy. Its largess of silver torrents flung down its slopes made fertile the little fields, and bestowed a lilting song on the silence, and took a turn at the mill-wheel, and did not disdain the thirst of the humble cattle. It gave pasturage in summer, and shelter from the winds of the winter. It was the assertive feature of his life; he could hardly have imagined existence without “the mounting.”
“Tole what he read on them rocks–yes, sir, ez glib ez swallerin’ a persimmon. ‘Twarn’t the reg’lar ten comman’ments–some cur’ous new texts–jes a-rollin’ ’em out ez sanctified ez ef he hed been called ter preach the gospel! An’ thar war Brother Eden Bates a-answerin’ ‘Amen’ ter every one. An’ Brother Jacob Page: ‘Glory, brother! Ye hev received the outpourin’ of the Sperit! Shake hands, brother!’ An’ sech ez that. Ter hev hearn the commotion they raised about that thar derned lyin’ sinner ye’d hev ‘lowed the meetin’ war held ter glorify him stiddier the Lord.”
Job Grinnell himself was a most notorious Christian. Renown, however, with him could never be a superfluity, or even a sufficiency, and he grudged the fame that these strange spiritual utterances were acquiring. He had long enjoyed the distinction of being considered a miraculous convert; his rescue from the wily enticements of Satan had been celebrated with much shaking and clapping of hands, and cries of “Glory,” and muscular ecstasy.
His religious experiences thenceforth, his vacillations of hope and despair, had been often elaborated amongst the brethren. But his was a conventional soul; its expression was in the formulae and platitudes of the camp-meeting. They sank into oblivion in the excitement attendant upon Purdee’s wild utterances from the mystic script of the rocks.
As Grinnell talked, he often paused in his work to imitate the gesticulatory enthusiasms of the saints at the camp-meeting. He was a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat invidiously, “a chunky man.” His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured, incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one suspender. He was engaged in skimming a great kettle of boiling sorghum with a perforated gourd, which caught the scum and strained the liquor. The process was primitive; instead of the usual sorghum boiler and furnace, the kettle was propped upon stones laid together so as to concentrate the heat of the fire. His wife was continually feeding the flames with chips which she brought in her apron from the wood-pile. Her countenance was half hidden in her faded pink sun-bonnet, which, however, did not obscure an expression responsive to that on the man’s face. She did not grudge Purdee the salvation he had found; she only grudged him the prestige he had derived from its unique method.