Dominie Dean: A Novel

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Butler Ellis Parker. Dominie Dean: A Novel

I. ‘THUSIA

II. MARY WIGGETT

III. THE COPPERHEAD

IV. ROSE HINCH

V. CHURCH TROUBLES

VI. THE BLACK PRUNELLA GAITERS

VII. MACK

VIII. THE GREATER GOOD

IX. LUCILLE HARDCOME

X. LUCILLE DISCOVERS DAVID

XI. STEVE TERRILL

XII. MONEY MATTERS

XIII. A SURPRISE

XIV. LUCILLE HELPS

XV. LANNY

XVI. AN INTERVIEW

XVII. LUCILLE TO THE RESCUE

XVIII. MR. FRAGG WORRIES

XIX. “BRIEFS”

XX. LANNY IS AWAY

XXI. A FAILURE

XXII. A TRAGEDY

XXIII. SCANDAL

XXIV. RESULTS

XXV. LUCILLE LOSES

XXVI. “OUR DAVID”

Отрывок из книги

DAVID DEAN caught his first glimpse of ‘Thusia Fragg from the deck of the “Mary K” steamboat at the moment when – a fledgling minister – he ended his long voyage down the Ohio and up the Mississippi and was ready to step on Riverbank soil for the first time.

From mid-river, as the steamer approached, the town had seemed but a fringe of buildings at the foot of densely foliaged hills with here and there a house showing through the green and with one or two church spires rising above the trees. Then the warehouse shut off the view while the “Mary K” made an unsensational landing, bumping against the projecting piles, bells jingling in her interior, paddle wheels noisily reversing and revolving again and the mate swearing at the top of his voice. As the bow of the steamer pushed beyond the warehouse, the sordidly ugly riverfront of the town came into view again – mud, sand, weather-beaten frame buildings – while on the sandy levee at the side of the warehouse lounged the twenty or thirty male citizens in shirt sleeves who had come down to see the arrival of the steamer. From the saloon deck they watched the steamer push her nose beyond the blank red wall of the warehouse. Against the rail stood all the boat’s passengers and at David’s side the friend he had made on the voyage up the river, a rough, tobacco-chewing itinerant preacher, uncouth enough but wise in his day and generation.

.....

“Stop it!” he cried. “Stop this nonsense!” but even as a dozen men crowded around them he lifted her in his arms and carried her up the railway embankment. Below them Mary Wiggett stood, safely back from the dangerous edge of the ice.

“Get a rig as quickly as you can,” David commanded. “She’s not hurt, but she’ll take cold in these wet clothes. Mary Wiggett,” he called, seeing her in the group on the ice, “I want you to come with us.”

.....