The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment, tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging, monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.
"Come to the Lord! Come now! Come to the light! Jesus will give it! Now is the appointed time,—come to the light!"
From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a woman in mortal agony.
"O my God!"
It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in it.
The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"
"No, let's go and see what it all is."
The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to the tent and looked in.
It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.
Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or insolent faces.