The quaint modulations rose and fell in wide compass, now high, now low. Would the Spirit of the Lord speak in a singing voice?
The thought was no new one; it had been in Morris Pugh's mind as he had listened of late to the oft-told tale--which grew in the telling-- of the mysterious music in the church on Trinity Sunday.
But no! The hymn died away to its Amen, and there was no sign. So he began his address.
And then suddenly his eye caught a figure by the door, a figure in black, close veiled. Surely it was Gwen--Gwen the sinner?
And then he spoke again. He had passed the night in prayer; he had eaten nothing; the whole body and soul of him was in deadly earnest.
Whether there was something more than this or not, that in itself has to be reckoned with, especially with an emotional audience.
So, as he spoke of the dead child, an old woman, her face seamed with wrinkles, seemed to feel a half-forgotten tug at her breast and began to weep; an old man, straining with almost sightless eyes for some glimpse which might make the young, flexible, lamenting voice more earthly, less heavenly, followed suit. Then the golden haze which filled the chapel seemed to hold a radiance, and close to the speaker, Alicia Edwards gave a little half-suffocated cry and tore, as if for breath, at the laces round her throat.
And still the insistent, strenuous voice held to its high protesting pitch of passionate reproof. Its cadence was the only sound----
No! What was that?
From the figure by the door a sound--the merest shadow of a sound!