Seized by an impulse as sudden as it was irresistible, he laid his hand on the stranger's arm.
"I want to speak with you," he said, hurriedly, and in a low tone. "Come this way. I will not detain you long."
He drew him out of the press into one of the side aisles, and thence towards the exit.
"Will you walk a few steps with me?" he asked; "I want to ask you several questions."
Lessing complied quietly.
The sound of a cornet followed them with the pleading notes of an old hymn. It was like the mighty voice of some archangel sounding a call to prayer. Then the singing began. Song after song rolled out on the night air across the common to a street where two men paced back and forth in the darkness. They were arm in arm. David was listening to the same story that Bethany and Frank Marion had heard the day before. He could not help but be stirred by it. Lessing's voice was so earnest, his faith was so sure. When he was through, David was utterly silenced. The questions with which he had intended to probe this man's claims were already answered.
"We might as well go back," he said at last. As they walked slowly towards the tent, he said: "I can't understand you. I feel all the time that you have been duped in some way; that you are under the spell of some mysterious power that deludes you."
Just as they passed within the tent, the cornet sounded again, the great congregation rose, and ten thousand voices went up as one:
"All hail the power of Jesus' name,
Let angels prostrate fall!"