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COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
The River Prophet
THE RIVER PROPHET
Elijah Rasba lived alone in a log cabin onTemple Run. He was a long, lank, blue-eyedyoung man, with curly brown hair and a pale,almost livid complexion. His eye-brows were heavyand dark brown, and the blue steel of his gaze was fixedunwaveringly upon any object that it distinguished.
Two generations before, Old Abe Rasba had builta church on a little brook, a tributary of Jackson River,away up in the mountains. The church was laid up offlat stones, gathered in fields, from ledges of rock andup the wooded mountain side. It was large enoughto hold all the people for miles around, and the roofwas supported by massive hewn timbers, and somefew attempts had been made to decorate the structure.
Old Abe had called his church “The Temple,” hadpreached from a big hollow oak stump, and laid downthe Law of the Bible, which he had memorized by heart,and expounded from experience. Elijah Rasba, grandsonof Old Abe, thus came honestly by reverence andreligion, but the strange glory which had surroundedthe old Temple had departed from the ruin, and ofall the congregation, only Elijah remained.
Land-slips had ruined a score of farms cleared on too-steephills; lightning had destroyed the overshot gristmill, and the two big stones had been cracked in the hotflames; a feud had opened graves before the allottedtime of the victims. It seemed to Elijah, sitting therein his cabin, as though damnation had visited the faithful,and that death was the reward of belief....