So Caleb and the minister were rejoiced, and spread the announcement throughout the town, and Grace rehearsed the church's familiar airs to all the hymns on the list which the minister gave her, though some of them she had to learn by ear, by the assistance of Caleb, who whistled them to her. Soon after dark on Sunday night six stalwart sinners, carefully selected by Caleb, exulted in the honor of carrying the little upright piano to the church, where they remained so as to be sure of seats from which to hear the music.
The Methodist church edifice in Claybanks could seat nearly three hundred people and give standing room to a hundred more. Seldom had it been filled to its extreme capacity; but when the opening hymn was "given out" on the night referred to, the building was crowded to the doors and a hundred or more persons outside begged and demanded that windows and doors should remain open during the singing. Pastor Grateway, who had been in the ministry long enough to make the most of every opportunity, improved this occasion to announce that according to custom in all churches possessing instruments, the music of each hymn would be played before the singing began. Grace, quite as uncomfortable as her husband would have been in her place, was nevertheless familiar with the music and the piano, and the congregation rose vociferously to the occasion. Even the sinners sang, and one back-seat ruffian, who had spent a winter in a city and frequented concert saloons, became so excited as to applaud at the end of the first hymn, for which he was promptly tossed through an open window by his more decorous comrades.
The hymn after the prayer was equally effective, so the minister interpolated still another one after the scripture reading called the "second lesson." He, too, had been uplifted by the music—so much uplifted that he preached more earnestly than usual and also more rapidly, so as to reach the period of "special effort." At the close of the sermon he said:—
"As we sing the hymn beginning 'Come, ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,' let all persons who wish to flee from the wrath to come, and desire the prayers of true believers, come forward and kneel at the mourners' bench."
The hymn was sung, and two or three persons approached the altar and dropped upon their knees. As the last verse was reached, Caleb whispered to the minister, who nodded affirmatively; then he whispered to Grace, who also nodded; then he found Philip, who was seated near the front, to be within supporting distance of his wife, and whispered:—
"Give your wife a spell for a minute; play 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross' the way you did the other day for me. That'll fetch 'em!"
Philip frowned and refused, but Caleb snatched his hand in a vise-like grasp and fairly dragged him from his seat. Half angry, half defiant, yet full of the spirit of any man who finds himself "in for it," whatever "it" may be, Philip dropped upon the piano stool which Grace had vacated, and attacked the keys as if they were sheaves of wheat and he was wielding a flail. He played the music as he had played it to Caleb, with the accent and swing of a march, yet with all the runs and variations with which country worshippers are wont to embroider it, and the hearers were so "wrought up" by it that they began the hymn with a roaring "attack" that was startling even to themselves. Grace, seeing no seat within reach, and unwilling to turn her back to the people, retired to one end of the piano, under one of the candles, from which position, on the raised platform in front of the pulpit, she beheld a spectacle seldom seen in its fulness except by ministers during a time of religious excitement—a sea of faces, many of them full of the ecstacy of faith and anticipation, others wild with terror at the doom of the impenitent.
Like most large-souled women, Grace was by nature religious and extremely sympathetic, and unconsciously she looked pityingly and beseechingly into many of the troubled faces. Her eyes rested an instant, unconsciously, on those of one of the stalwart sinners who had brought the piano to the church. In a second the man arose, strode forward, and dropped upon his knees. Grace looked at another,—for the six were together on one bench,—and he, too, came forward. Then a strange tumult took possession of her; she looked commandingly at the others in succession, and in a moment the entire six were on their knees at the altar.
"Great hell!" bellowed the ruffian who had been tossed through the window, into which he had climbed halfway back in his eagerness to hear the music. Then he tumbled into the church, got upon his feet, and hurried forward to join the other sinners at the mourners' bench, which had already become so crowded that Caleb was pressing the saints from the front seats to make room for coming penitents.
The hymn ended, but Philip did not know it, so he continued to play. Grace whispered to him, and when he had reached the last bar, which he ended with a crash, he abruptly seated himself on the pulpit steps and felt as if he had done something dreadful and been caught in the act. Grace reseated herself at the instrument; and as the minister, with the class leaders, Sunday-school teachers, and other prominent members of the church were moving among the penitents, counselling and praying, and the regular order of song and prayer had been abandoned or forgotten, she played the music of the hymns that had been designated by the minister on the previous day. Some of the music was plaintive, some spirited, but she played all with extreme feeling, whether the people sang or merely listened. She played also all newer church music that had appealed to her in recent years, and when, at a very late hour, the congregation was dismissed, she suddenly became conscious of the most extreme exhaustion she had ever known. As she and her husband were leaving the church, one of the penitents approached them and said:—