But now old Eva Gunnersdotter began to wail. "I have heard nothing. I can't go along with you. I'm like Lot's wife, and may not flee the wrath to come, but must be left behind. Here I must stay and be turned into a pillar of salt."
She wept from despair, and the Hellgumists all gathered round to pray with her. Still she heard nothing. And her despair became a thing of terror. "I can't hear anything!" she groaned. "But you've got to take me along. You shan't leave me to perish in the lake of fire!"
"You must wait, Eva," said the Hellgumists. "The call may come. It will surely come, either to-night or in the morning."
"You don't answer me," cried the old woman, "you don't tell what I want to know. Maybe you don't intend to take me along if no call comes to me!"
"It will come, it will come!" the Hellgumists shouted.
"You don't answer me!" screamed the old woman in a frenzy.
"Dear Eva, we can't take you along if God doesn't call you!" the
Hellgumists protested. "But the call will come, never fear."
Then the old dame suddenly rose from her kneeling attitude, straightened her rickety old body, and brought her cane down on the floor with a thud. "You people mean to go away and leave me to perish!" she thundered. "Yes, yes, yes, you mean to go and let me perish!" She had become furiously angry, and once more they saw before them Eva Gunnersdotter as she had been in her younger days— strong and passionate and fiery.
"I want nothing more to do with you!" she shrieked. "I don't want to be saved by you. Fie upon you! You would abandon wife and children, father and mother, to save yourselves. Fie! You're a parcel of idiots to be leaving your good farms. You're a lot of misguided fools running after false prophets, that's what you are! It's upon you that fire and brimstone will rain. It is you who must perish. But we who remain at home, we shall live."