Elder Skates, as if reminded by these thunders of his duty, blushed deeply with shame and penitence.
"Vesty," he pleaded tremulously, "will you start 'Carried by the Angels'?"
Vesty went to the little organ.
Now we forgot all the rest, all that was rude and incongruous, forgot how mean the school-house was, how few protective boards left upon it. Captain Pharo and Captain Shamgar dropped their mallets at the first sound of Vesty's voice, and came in on tiptoe, with changed faces, reverent.
For there was the Basin sorrow in Vesty's voice, enough to subdue greater discords, and the Basin hope in it, implicit, wonderful, thrilled to tearful vision by a word:
"Carried by the angels,"
she sang.
"Carried by the angels.
Carried by the angels to the skies.
Carried by the angels,
Carried by the angels,
"Gathered with the lost in Paradise."
Coat-sleeves began to do duty across moist eyes; seeing—we all being simple Basins—winged white forms in the still air outside the battered schoolhouse, bearing worn, earth-weary forms away—
"Gathered with the lost in Paradise."