"Oh, don't talk that way, Barb! Of course I don't mean to do anything of the sort. It's a kind of relief to talk sometimes, and I do feel bitter enough."
Barbara turned sharply on him again and said: "That's just the way to get to be a murderer—keep stirring up your spite. After a while the time'll come when you can't control yourself, may be, and then you'll do something that you only meant to think about."
Tom shuddered a little and, feeling uncomfortable under Barbara's gaze, got up and started away. But Barbara followed him and caught hold of his arm, and pulled him around till she could look in his face, and said, with more feeling than she liked to show:
"Look here, Tom! Give me your word and honor that you'll put all such thoughts out of your mind."
"Of course I will, Sis, if you think there's any danger."
"And come and go over to the camp-meeting to-night with mother and me. It'll do you good to see somebody besides the cows."
"All right," said Tom, shaking himself to get rid of his evil spirit, and remembering, as he went out to harness old Blaze-face to the wagon, that he would stand a chance of catching a glimpse of Rachel in the light of the torches.
The preaching was vigorous and stirring, and the exhorter, who came after the preacher, told many pathetic stories, which deeply moved a people always eager to be excited. The weird scene no doubt contributed by its spectacular effect to increase the emotion. The bonfires on the platforms illuminated the circle of white tents, which stood out against the wall of deep blackness in the forest behind; the light mounted a hundred feet and more through the thick branches of lofty beech and maple trees, and was reflected from the under side of leaves quivering in the breeze. The boughs and foliage, illuminated from below, had an unreal and unworldly aspect. No imagery of the preacher could make the threatened outer darkness of the lost so weird to the imagination as this scene, in which the company of simple-minded people found themselves in the presence of a savage Nature, and in a sphere of light bounded on every hand by a blackness as of darkness primeval.
Tom paid little attention to the eloquence of the preacher or to the tearful words of him who came after. At first he was interested and even excited by the scene; he watched the flickering of the great shadows of the tree trunks as the platform fires rose and fell; but presently he set himself to searching under the large straw bonnets for a face. He knew well that the sight of that face could not make him happy, but he seemed driven by some evil impulse to seek for it. If Rachel was there he did not find her. When the exhorter had closed his artless string of disconnected anecdotes with an equally artless appeal, and a hymn was announced, Tom whispered to Barbara that he would go and see if the horse was all right, and would meet her at the door of the Mount Zion tent when meeting should "let out." Then as the congregation rose, he went out by a passage between two of the tents into the woods. The "exercises" lasted a full hour longer, and it was half-past ten before the presiding elder gave the benediction. Barbara and her mother went to the door of the Mount Zion tent, where they stood watching the moving people and waiting for Tom. Mely McCord, who was to ride home with them, was talking in her fluent way to Barbara when an excited man rushed into the space within the tents, and, finding himself obstructed by the groups of people in the aisles, ran hurriedly across the boards that served for backless benches until he reached the great rude pulpit. He addressed a word to the white-haired presiding elder, who was at that moment standing on the steps of the stand, engaged in shaking hands with old friends from all parts of his district. Then the new-comer seized the tin horn that hung against a tree, and which was used to call the people to meeting. With this in his hand he mounted the rude board rostrum and blew a long, harsh blast. Part of the people out of curiosity had stopped talking when he made his appearance, and when the strident tin horn ceased, there was a momentary murmur and then the stillness of death, except for confused cries of excitement in the remote outer regions, which now became audible. Then the man on the platform said, in a breathless voice:
"A man has been killed in the woods outside of the camp-ground. The murderer has fled. The sheriff is wanted!"