He placed his hands over his face and started on a run to the front.
The Boy giggled, and his mother pinched him.
"Did ye see that red-headed feller, Ma," he whispered. "He didn't do fair. He peeked through his fingers—I saw his eyes!"
"Sh!"
The preachers had come down from the pulpit now and stood over the wailing prostrated mourners and exhorted them to repent and believe before it was forever and eternally too late. Three of them were talking at the same time to different groups of mourners. The louder they exhorted the louder the sinners cried. The fourth preacher walked down the aisle searching for those who were yet hardening their hearts and stiffening their necks. He paused beside a prim little old maid who had lately arrived from Tidewater Virginia. Her bright eyes were dry.
"Dear lady, are you a child of God?" the preacher cried.
The prim figured stiffened indignantly:
"No, sir! I'm an Episcopalian!"
The preacher groaned and passed on and the Boy stuffed his fist in his mouth.
For half an hour the roar of the conflict was incessant, and its violence indescribable. It was broken now and then by a kindly soul among the elderly women raising a sweet old-fashioned hymn.