"You sneak on me, do you? I just tell you this, Ellen, you'll get your punishment, never fear! A girl to run out of church and refuse to listen to the words of her good grandfather! You know what happens to bad people--that will happen to you unless you repent. The Bible says we shan't have anything to do with people who don't do right. I'll speak to you, but I won't have anything more to do with you until you say you are sorry for the way you acted. Get out of my room!"
Ellen got out quickly and went down the stairs. In the office she hid her face in the pillows of the old sofa. She understood now that the house was divided; she felt division in her own heart. The teaching of the Seventh-Day Baptists was the only religious teaching she had ever had--perhaps Matthew was right. Then what would become of her father who did not go to church? And what would become of her who fled from church?
That Grandfather would give up the children without a struggle was unlikely. When a month had passed and they had not reappeared at service, he went to visit his son-in-law, taking Amos with him. It was Sunday evening and the church bells were ringing. He carried a long staff, and looked, with his silvery beard and his unearthly expression, exactly like the early pilgrims, worn by vigils and fasting, who had set out from this spot in summer's heat and winter's cold to gather into the Net of Heavenly Wisdom all who were willing to be caught therein. Across this undulating land, then thickly forested, had traveled not only Seventh-Day Baptists, but Moravian and Mennonite, Dunker, Quaker, and New Mooner, all on journeys which were concerned with the salvation of souls, all anticipating the coming of the Celestial Bridegroom. They had not walked on a smooth road comfortably as did Grandfather and Amos, but with sandaled, stumbling feet in narrow paths, from which they stepped to let pass a single Indian warrior or perchance a horde going noisily to Lancaster with squaws and papooses, worn old horses and dirty impedimenta, to exchange, for a few hundred pounds, mountains and valleys, great rivers and dense forests.
Grandfather walked silently, his head bowed, and Amos, stepping behind him at the approach of a team, kept that position, his head bent like the old man's.