Rhoda, listening outside, behind the screen of vine leaves at the open window, could not repress a shudder at the thought that, had David Powell shown this new power of his a year or two ago, she herself might have been among the convulsed who bore testimony to his terrible influence.
"How is that, Mrs. Maxfield?" returned Richard Gibbs. "Why, how can it be, except by abounding grace!"
"Nay, Mr. Gibbs, but how dreadful it seems, don't it? Just think of falling down in a fit in the open field!"
"Just think of living and dying unawakened to sin! Is not that a hundred thousand times more dreadful?"
"I hope it don't need to roll about like Bedlamites to be awakened to a sense of sin, Mr. Gibbs!" cried Seth Maxfield.
"The Lord forbid!" ejaculated brother Jackson.
"A likely tale!" added Mrs. Seth, cheerfully.
"I'm against all such doings," said Roger Heath, shaking his head.
"But if it be the Lord's doing, sir?" remonstrated Richard Gibbs, speaking slowly, and with an anxious lack-lustre gaze at the white-washed ceiling, as though counsel might be read there. "And I've heard tell that John Wesley did the same at his field-preachings."
Brother Jackson hastily wiped his mouth, after a deep draught of ale, before replying, "That was in the beginning, when such things may have been needful. But now, I fear, they only bring scandal upon us, and strengthen scoffers."