It was three days before the church was opened. What may have been Adam's primitive thoughts, moving secretively among his townsmen? Then a sudden rumor ran, a cry went up, of horror, of accusation, of the lust of strife. Before the accusation Adam did not hesitate to make his defiance perfect. The primitive mind was not in doubt. With a blink of his red eyelids, he answered:
“You tell Andrew Hill, don't you put another post in my pew.”
A meeting was held; a majority voted enthusiastically to strike his name from the rolls for unchristian behavior and to replace the pillar. A minority declared him a wronged man. That was natural enough in Preston Plains. But Adam Wick's actions at this point were thought original and effective by every one.
He sat silently through the proceedings in the pew with the hacked pillar, his shoulders hunched, his sharp eyes restless.
“Mr. Wick,” said the minister, sternly, “have you anything to say?”
“I put fifty-six dollars into this meetin'-house. Any man deny that?”
He took the hymn-book from the rack, lifted the green cushion from the seat, threw it over his shoulder, and walked out.
“There's no further business before this meeting,” said Chairman Hill.
It was a Sunday in August and nearly noon. From the side porch of Adam Wick's house on the hill the clustered foliage of the village below was the centre of the landscape. The steeple and ridgepole of the church rose out of the centre of the foliage.
The landscape could not be fancied without the steeple. The dumb materials of the earth, as well as the men who walk upon it, acquire habits. You could read on the flat face of the valley that it had grown accustomed to Preston Plains steeple.
On the side porch stood a long, high-backed bench. It was a close imitation of the pews in the church below among the foliage, with the long green cushion on the seat and a chair facing it with a hymn-book on it. Adam sat motionless on the bench. His red-lidded eyes were fixed intently on the steeple.
A hen with a brood of downy yellow chickens pecked about the path. A turkey strutted up and down. The air was sultry, oppressive. A low murmur of thunder mingled with the sleepy noises of creaking crickets and clucking hen.