"Yes, you are the type," he murmured to it, with evident enjoyment in
the conceit. "Your name isn't Johnny any more. It's the Rev. Theron
Ware."



CHAPTER XXII


The annual camp-meeting of the combined Methodist districts of Octavius
and Thessaly was held this year in the second half of September, a
little later than usual. Of the nine days devoted to this curious
survival of primitive Wesleyanism, the fifth fell upon a Saturday. On
the noon of that day the Rev. Theron Ware escaped for some hours from
the burden of work and incessant observation which he shared with twenty
other preachers, and walked alone in the woods.

The scene upon which he turned his back was one worth looking at. A
spacious, irregularly defined clearing in the forest lay level as a
tennis-court, under the soft haze of autumn sunlight. In the centre was
a large, roughly constructed frame building, untouched by paint, but
stained and weather-beaten with time. Behind it were some lines of
horse-sheds, and still further on in that direction, where the trees
began, the eye caught fragmentary glimpses of low roofs and the fronts
of tiny cottages, withdrawn from full view among the saplings and
underbrush. At the other side of the clearing, fully fourscore tents
were pitched, some gray and mended, others dazzlingly white in their
newness. The more remote of these tents fell into an orderly arrangement
of semi-circular form, facing that part of the engirdling woods where