Just within the door but out of the old man’s sight, Aunt Dicey counseled her grandson:
“You speak him fair, Zeb’lon, for they say he sure has got religion; but I’ll stand on the porch with the gun whar he can see me good; maybe that’ll keep him from backslidin’ all of a suddent.”
They went out together. Zeb said “Mornin’” but his tone was not conciliatory.
“I’ve got a mighty pretty year-old colt up to my place; come of first-class Kentucky stock. If you’re a mind to, you can come up and git him, to pay for that thar tame deer I shot. G’long!”
Church was “in” when Aunt Dicey and Zeb drove up, and before they had alighted and found a place to hitch among the two score beasts of draught or burden that were disposed in the surrounding woods, church was “out.” But the congregation didn’t disperse; they stood about in groups discussing the wonderful events of the past week. Preacher Carr came and stood in the doorway:
“Give me that old-time religion,” he sang out lustily, and his people joined joyously in the refrain. Arsula Garrett always led the singing and she followed him with:
“It was good for the Hebrew children,” and they kept on chanting the efficacy of the “old-time religion” in the case of “the prophet Daniel,” “the good Elijah,” “the psalmist David,” “poor old Noah,” “the patriarch Abr’ham,” and, when they had exhausted Arsula’s list of sacred-history heroes, they sang:
“It was good for my old mother,”
“It will be good in the time of trouble,”
“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”