“Be you swearing-certain they sinners were tramping bodies?”
Jason returned, plunging two hearers into a hot and cold bath of perspiration:
“Noa, I bain’t!”
“Med-be,” said Sarah, with a vinegar face of disgust, “that to-yielding girl of Abey Absalom’s has been straying with some bachelor-mankind hereabouts. Both Joe Chinney and Tudd Dowsall be sinners prone to fall.”
She waited for no answer:
“And to them and all such, Judgment will be meted out hereafter!”
She took the rabbit from the plate, disposed its limbs upon the chopping-board, balanced the chopper above the victim, and brought down the blade. Nelly squeaked as though the rabbit had been capable of utterance, as the mangling steel fell. The awful voice went on, as its owner with dreadful dexterity finished chopping up the victim:
“For there is a hell for chamberers and wantoners!” She solemnly laid the remains of the sacrifice in the pie-dish, strewed cold vegetables above, poured a cupful of gravy upon the whole, and added, with the salt and mace and pepper: “Nor shall fornicators fail of their place therein. Girl, open the oven door!”
Pale Nelly totteringly obeyed, showing a cavernous interior of coaly blackness, radiating fierce heat, illuminated by red and leaping reflections of awfully-suggestive flame. Both the son and the daughter-in-law knew themselves guiltless, their endearments chaste and lawful as those of Zacharias and Elizabeth. But when the high-priestess of the mysteries advanced, knelt, and with a powerful shove of her bony arm drove in the pie-dish to deepest perdition, and clashed the oven-door as though it shut upon the lost for all eternity, their knees trembled and their eyes clung together behind the widow’s narrow back. Even Jason gulped and shuddered. But he recovered as the widow turned upon him, demanding:
“Was it Joe Chinney wi’ Nance Absalom?”