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Eli was in the room, having come back from his expedition. Eli was now eighteen, and had attained the full stature of a man; also his voice was that of a man, except that now and then it cracked and went up in a way that would have been comical, if anybody that listened to Eli ever had a sense of fun. Just now he was telling his parents and wondering sisters how the Holy Spirit had blessed him again, the shivers had seized him, and old Mrs. Puffer had been instantly relieved of her pains. Mr. Watkins said “Amen!” three or four times, very loud, and then he turned to Dad, remarking, “The Lord blesses us in our children.” Dad said yes, that was true, possibly more true than they knew; he asked, had Mr. Watkins ever thought of the possibility that the Lord might send a new revelation into the world? And instantly you could see the family sit up, and fix their eyes upon Dad, the whole six of them, as rigid as so many statues. What did their visitor mean?

Dad explained: there had been two revelations so far, to be found in the old and the new testaments; why mightn’t it be that the Holy Spirit was preparing another? For a long time the followers of the True Word had awaited this fulfillment; the promise was in the Book, for anyone to read. This New Dispensation would supersede the others, and naturally would have to be different from the others, and the followers of the old message might fail to recognize it, jist like the previous case. Didn’t that seem reasonable? Dad asked; and Mr. Watkins answered promptly that it did, and for Dad to go on. So Dad said that this True Word was to be revealed through the minds of men, and would be a message of freedom; the Holy Spirit wanted us to seek boldly, and not be afraid; and presently out of the seeking of many minds the Truth would come—perhaps from some one who had been despised and rejected, that would become the corner stone of the new temple. Dad said all this with the deepest solemnity, and Bunny listened, not a little bewildered; he had never had any idea that Dad knew so much Bible-talk—as much as any preacher!

So it seemed to the Watkins family also. The old man drank in every word, and insisted that Dad should reveal to them all he knew. And Dad told them that they had one son, whose words had been reported to him, and seemed to him to bear the true spirit of the Third Revelation. Dad had met this son, and been struck by his appearance, for he looked jist like what followers of the True Word had been taught to expect—he was tall, and had fair hair and blue eyes, and his look was grave and his voice deep. So Dad believed that the bearer of this message of freedom, to which they were charged to listen, was their eldest son, Paul, whom they mistakenly had driven from among them.

Well, you should have seen the sensation in that family! Old Mr. Watkins sat with his jaw dropped down, as thunder-struck as if Dad had sprouted a pair of angel’s wings before his eyes. Mrs. Watkins’ thin face wore a look of utter rapture, and her two stringy hands were clasped together in front of her chin. As for Ruth, she seemed just about ready to slide off her chair and onto her knees. Everybody seemed to be pleased but one, and that was Eli. Eli was glaring at Dad, and suddenly he sprang from his chair, his face contorted; he shouted, and his voice cracked, and went up shrill and piercing: “Can he show the signs?” And as Dad delayed to answer, he shouted again, “I say, can he show the signs? Has he healen the sick? Has he casted out devils? Do the lame rise up and walk? Do the dying take up their beds? Tell me that! Tell me!”

Well, sir, it floored Dad; for Eli was the last person in the room from whom he would have expected an onslaught. Dad thought of Eli as a gawky farm yokel, who came, with no socks on, and pants that did not reach his shoe-tops, to bring the milk and take away the dirty dishes; but here was Eli, transformed into a prophet of the Lord, and blazing, after a fashion not unknown to prophets, with a white flame of jealousy! “ I am him who the Holy Spirit has blessed! I am him who the Lord hath chosen to show the signs! Look at me, I say—look at me! Ain’t my hair fair and my eyes blue? Ain’t my face grave and my voice deep?”—and sure enough, Eli’s voice had gone down again, and Eli was a grown man, a seer of visions and pronouncer of dooms. “I say beware of he that cometh as a serpent creeping in the night, to tempt the souls of they that waver! I say, beware the spawns of Satan, that lure the soul with false doctrine, and blast away the Rock of Ages! I give the signs, that all men may know! I stand by the Four Square Gospel, that was good enough for my fathers and is good enough for me! Glory Hallelujah, and Salvation unto they that has washed their sins in the Blood of the Lamb! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Eli flung up his hands with a mighty shriek, and old Mr. Watkins rose from his chair, and shouted “Glory! Glory!” And then a horrible thing began to happen, right there before your eyes; a kind of convulsion seized upon Eli, his eyes rolled up, and foam appeared at his lips, and a series of wriggles started at his shoulders and ran out at his finger tips; and his knees began to knock together, and his features to work in a kaleidescope of idiocy. He began to bellow, in an enormous voice, that you would never have dreamed could be contained in a body of his size; and what he said was—but you couldn’t reproduce it, because no one can recollect a jabber of syllables, and anyhow, it would look too silly on a printed page. But it had some kind of spell for old Mr. Watkins, it caused him to throw his two hands up into the air, and jerk his arms as if he were trying to jump up to heaven with them. “Let go!” Let go!” he shrieked, and began to double up and straighten out again as if he had been shot through the middle; and old Mrs. Watkins—poor frail little woman, made of nothing but bones and whipcord covered with skin—began to rock and sway in her chair, and the two little girls slid off onto the floor and wallowed on their stomachs, and Ruth sat white-faced and terrified, gazing at the two strangers, and from them to Eli, bellowing his jabber of syllables like a furious malediction at Dad.

And that was the end of it. Dad backed out, and Bunny with him, and the two of them crept away through the darkness to their camp; and all the way Dad whispered, “Jesus Christ!”

The next day was Sunday, or the Sabbath, as the Watkinses called it; and by the time Dad and Bunny had got their breakfast in the morning, the family had hitched up their one old horse to their one old wagon, and departed—the father and mother riding, and the four young people walking ahead, on their way to the weekly debauch at the Apostolic Church of Paradise.

That left Dad and Bunny to hunt quail, undisturbed by public opinion; and in the afternoon they got into their car, and rode about to make an inspection of the domain they had purchased, and to meet some of the neighbors, now their tenants. Dad had a map, showing the various tracts, and as they drove he was laying out roads and other improvements in his mind; some day this country would all be settled, he said—and the thing to begin with was a rock-crusher! There came riding along the fellow on horseback whom they had met the first time; they knew now that it was young Bandy, the son of their enemy, and they exchanged greetings—the cat and the gopher being polite!

They rode up into one of the arroyos where there was a vacant ranch, the Rascum place. They were surprised to find a charming little bungalow, with a good porch in front, completely buried under a bougainvillea vine, which would be a mass of purple blossoms in the spring. “Gee, Dad,” exclaimed Bunny, “this is where we ought to come and stay!” The other answered, there should be somebody to keep it up; there was a well here, and with a little fixing it would be quite a place. There was even a cat, and she looked contented; there were plenty of gophers, Dad said, and it was a good sign for victory over Mr. Bandy! They laughed together.