“I believe!”
“I believe!” came from her companions.
“I am glad to-night to stand here to tell you that I am saved and happy—oh! so happy! Why do you wait? Some of you know me—I was sinful and tired and afraid once, but not now, thank God! not now. I’m saved, saved, saved!”
Louder and wilder grew the girl’s cry. She waved her arms violently, and paced rapidly to and fro. The listening woman shifted her position from the sidewalk to the gutter. Her hands loosened their clutch upon her shawl; she wrung them constantly as she looked with wondering eyes at Maggie—Maggie who was n’t tired nor afraid any more, and was happy, and all because she was “saved”! What did it all mean? How had it happened?
The girl stopped abruptly in her walk, and, as though answering her thought, cried, “It is so easy to get saved, too. All you have to do is to throw yourself on your knees and call on Jesus, and give yourself up to Him, and all your sins and fears and troubles and burdens are gone, and you’ll be happy and glad and free and saved forever!”
Without a pause her voice shot into the song which they had sung before; but now its measure was changed to a clear, quick chant, with which she kept time by a soft patting with her hands. Clearer and higher grew her tones, and her companions, sinking to their knees, moaned in hushed voices a weird accompaniment, while the gently shaken tambourines lent again their strange barbaric rhythm, marked from time to time by the great drum’s muffled beat.
Nearer and nearer to the semi-circle of kneeling figures stole the listening woman. Tears were streaming from her eyes, her blue lips quivered, a great sob tore itself from her tight throat. At length she stood quite within the lines of the singers, and then, with a strange, wild cry, she, too, fell upon her knees in the slime of the street. Her old shawl fell from her head, her arms rested upon the drum, her swollen face was buried in them. A great shout of “Glory to God!” went up about her, and some one on the curb cried amazedly, “Why, it’s old Kit!” But she heard only that monotonous wailing voice chanting stridently “When the King Comes In.” Afterwards there came a knowledge of some one’s arm across her shoulders, of whispered words and urgent voices, a sensation of being lifted to her feet and helped along the street, and then a confusing blur of yellow light from oil lamps in a dingy hall. And at length full consciousness, dull fatigue, and an overwhelming desire for sleep.
Maggie and one of the brothers in red jersey and jaunty cap walked home with her, pouring into her ears encouraging advice in strange, cant words, which she but half understood. At the doorway of the human hive where she and Con slept and fought and starved the man looked sharply at Maggie.
“You are sure!” he whispered.
“Yes—they’re married,” replied the girl.