The deputy laughed, a trifle insolently. He turned, swinging his hat—he had done the sacred edifice the reverence of removing it—and surveyed the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed people, leaning forward, standing up, huddled together, as if he had some speculation as to the effect upon them of these unprecedented proceedings.
Kelsey could read nothing. His strong head was in a whirl; he caught at the table, or he might have fallen. The amazement of it—the shame of it!
'Who does this?' he exclaimed, in sudden realization of the situation. Already self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidelity, he stood in his pulpit in the infinitely ignoble guise of a culprit before the law.
Those fine immaterial issues of faith and unfaith—where were they? The torturing fear of futurity, and of a personal devil and a material hell—how impotent! His honest name—never a man had borne it that had suffered this shame; the precious dignity of freedom was riven from him; the calm securities of his self-respect were shaken for ever. He could never forget the degradation of the sheriff's touch, from which he shrank with so abrupt a gesture that the officer grasped his pistol and every nerve was on the alert. Kelsey was animated at this moment by a pulse as essentially mundane as if he had seen no visions and dreamed no dreams. He had not known how he held himself—how he cherished those values, so familiar that he had forgotten to be thankful till their possession was a retrospection.
He sought to regain his self-control. He caught up the paper; it quivered in his trembling hands; he strove to read it. 'Rescue!' he cried out in a tense voice. 'Rick Tyler! I never rescued Rick Tyler!'
The words broke the long constraint. They were an elucidation, a flash of light. The congregation looked at him with changed eyes, and then looked at each other. Why did he deny? Were not the words of his prophecy still on the air? Had he not confessed himself an evil-doer, forsaken of God and bereft of grace? His prophecy was matched by the details of his experience. Had he done no wrong he could have foreseen no vengeance.
'Rick Tyler ain't wuth it,' said one old man to another, as he spat on the floor.
The widow of Joel Byers, the murdered man, fell into hysterical screaming at Rick Tyler's name, and was presently borne out by her friends and lifted into one of the wagons.
'It air jes' ez well that the sher'ff takes Pa'son Kelsey, arter that thar confession o' his'n,' said one of the dark-browed men, helping to yoke the oxen. 'We couldn't hev kep' him in the church arter sech words ez his'n, and church discipline ain't a-goin' ter cast out no sech devil ez he air possessed by.'
Brother Jake Tobin, too, appreciated that the arrest of the preacher in his pulpit was a solution of a difficult question. It was manifestly easier for the majesty of the State of Tennessee to deal with him than for the little church on the Big Smoky.