A female voice began a hymn.
"This is the field, the world below,—
Where wheat and tares together grow;
Jesus, ere long will weed the crop,
And pluck the tares in anger up."
The hills, for miles around, reverberated the bursting chorus,
"For soon the reaping time will come,
And angels shout the harvest home!"
The ministers came down from the stand, and distributed themselves among the people; bowed heads and shaking forms marking their path;—a woman from the most remote quarter of the throng, rushed up to the mourner's seats, and flung herself upon her knees with a piercing cry;—another and another;—some weeping aloud; some in tearless distress;—numbers knelt where they had sat;—and louder and louder, like the final trump, and the shout of the resurrection morn, arose the surge of song;—
"For soon the reaping time will come
And angels shout the harvest home!"
Carry trembled and shrank; and Ida's firmer nerves were quivering. A lull in the storm, and a man knelt in the aisle, to implore "mercy and pardon for a dying sinner, who would not try to avert the wrath to come."
Sonorous accents went on with his weeping petition;—praying for "the hardened, thoughtless transgressors—those who had neither part nor lot in this matter; who stood afar off, despising and reckless." Again rolled out a chorus; speaking now of joyful assurance.
"Jesus my all to heaven has gone—
(When we get to heaven we will part no more,)
He whom I fix my hopes upon—
When we get to heaven we will part no more.
Oh! Fare-you-well! oh! fare-you-well!
When we get to heaven we will part no more,
Oh! Fare-you-well!"
Ida's eyes brimmed, and Carry sobbed with over-wrought feeling. Arthur bent over the railing and spoke to the latter. He looked troubled,—but for her: Lynn stood against one of the pillars which supported the roof; arms crossed, and a redder mantling of his dark cheek; Charley was cool and grave, taking in the scene in all its parts, with no sympathy with any of the phases of emotion. The tumult increased; shouted thankgivings, and wails of despair; singing and praying and exhorting, clashing in wild confusion.