Brother Butters:—“Be prepared for that awful day of judgment, when the paths that lead to heaven and the paths that lead to hell are divided by the width of a hair!”
Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN—A-A-MEN!!!”
“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.”
At this point the rain descended out of the kindly skies, the flaming oratory was extinguished, and everybody retreated into the store. It was getting dark, and while the services were not completed, the exhorters felt that much spiritual progress had been made.
Most of the regulars departed silently when the shower was over.
“Say, Rat, was that you down on the marsh the night we tried the goose call?” asked Bill Wirrick. “I seen somebody out near the channel w’en them funny streaks was in the sky. Since it all come out about the goose call we don’t try to keep it dark no more. The fellers ’round the store got onto it, an’ they’ve been devillin’ the life out o’ me an’ Tip. The dad gasted thing wouldn’t work an’ we’ve took it apart. We tried to make it sound like a flock o’ geese, but it sounded more like a flock o’ thunder storms. Them sky streaks that night was a funny thing. They’s a paper here some’rs that’s got it all in. Lemme see if I c’n find it. Tip had it yisterd’y.”
Wirrick finally found the newspaper. Hyatt took it to the dim kerosene lamp and spent some time studying the long account of the magnetic storm. It was explained by scientific authorities, and bemoaned by the interests it had affected. The telegraph and telephone companies had been put out of business for several hours, and commerce had suffered while Hyatt’s soul was being purified in celestial fires.