plished by a series of revivalist meetings, which, sweeping over the country-side like a plague, had the magnetic effect of a circus. Paul disdained any public celebration which he had not helped to organize. School concerts, tableaux, "socials," and First of July parades were different, for in them he had always played "no mean part." But Gritty Kestrell, who adored crowds, half dragged him along to the big tent on the hill above the church where a renowned evangelist was to hold forth.
Some of the hymns were new and stirring, but Paul could not subscribe to the machine-like manner in which the evangelist's partner played them on the portable organ. The tent was crowded to suffocation. Baptists predominated, but Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and nondescripts kept squeezing in between the chairs and the sides of the tent. In front were benches kept vacant for penitents.
Paul had come to scoff, and there was material at hand at the very outset. How, for instance, could anything be made "whiter than snow" by being "washed in the blood of the lamb"? At best it was an ugly picture.
Moment by moment the atmosphere became tenser. Impossible to keep one's eyes off that electric man, whose mouth writhed, whose arms never rested, whose eyes flashed and pierced, whose voice made your spine shiver. Paul could hear his neighbours breathing. Women and old men were whispering, "Praise be to His Holy Name." At regular intervals the speaker leaned forward like an impassioned auctioneer, making his congregation feel that when the gavel descended the bargain would be for ever lost to them, salvation beyond their reach, damnation and agony their portion.
Suddenly Paul caught sight of Becky States. Growling and chattering more weirdly than ever, rolling her eyes till they glistened like porcelain in her black face, she wrenched the prisms from her ears and flung herself
