CHAPTER VII.
THE SMOKE-TALK.
One day in September Mrs.Woods was at work in her cabin, and Gretchen was at school.

Mrs.Woods was trying to sing.

She had a hard, harsh voice always, and the tune was a battle-cry.

The hymn on which she was exercising her limited gifts was not one of the happy tunes of Methodism, which early settlers on the Columbia loved to sing.

It was a very censorious rhyme and took a very despondent view of the human heart: "The pure testimony poured forth from the Spirit Cuts like a two-edged sword; And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented Because they're condemned by the Word." She made the word "hypocrites" ring through the solitary log-cabin--she seemed to have the view that a large population of the world were of this class of people.