There were days, and moonlight nights, too, when strange sights
and sounds of quite another nature could have been noted by the
river as it flowed under the bridge that united the two little
villages.
Issuing from the door of the Riverboro Town House, and winding
down the hill, through the long row of teams and carriages that
lined the roadside, came a procession of singing men and singing
women. Convinced of sin, but entranced with promised pardon;
spiritually intoxicated by the glowing eloquence of the
latter-day prophet they were worshipping, the band of
"Cochranites "marched down the dusty road and across the bridge,
dancing, swaying, waving handkerchiefs, and shouting hosannas.
God watched, and listened, knowing that there would be other
prophets, true and false, in the days to come, and other
processions following them; and the river watched and listened
too, as it hurried on towards the sea with its story of the
present that was sometime to be the history of the past.
When Jacob Cochrane was leading his overwrought, ecstatic band
across the river, Waitstill Baxter, then a child, was watching
the strange, noisy company from the window of a little brick
dwelling on the top of the Town-House Hill.
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