She shook her head and I thought she paled.
It was an unheard of thing for the whole population not to turn out for the funeral of one of the villagers, and Mrs. Carn, I knew, had befriended Lisbeth, in spite of Old Con's displeasure. She must have noted my surprise, for she turned on me squarely, facing me with what seemed at the time an unnecessary display of staunchness.
"Perhaps you didn't know," she said very softly, "that the Minister—couldn't come—and—"
She paused, while I made some inadequate reply, for I, too, seemed caught in the sort of mirthless evasion that engulfed her.
"He—" she made a slight backwards motion of the head towards the upper room of the shack—"is going to—preach."
My startled exclamation must have disclosed all the horror I felt at this announcement, but, before I could speak again, she had gone swiftly up the rickety steps and pushed shut the flimsy board door behind her.
The next afternoon was one that I have never been able to erase from my mind, for even more vividly than my earlier impressions of Con Darton, it marked the wizardry as well as the fearfulness of his power. A hundred times during that burial service the sound of a banged door and a rasped voice sounded in my ears and the sight of a tense, hurrying figure in a black dress and a bumpy red shawl moved before my eyes. The thin figure was lying there now and over it, his rusty black coat tails curving in the wind, like wings bent to trap the air, his gray eyes misty with emotion, hovered the man whose door she had never entered since that fateful day of Lisbeth's birth. I could not but feel that the vision of him standing there told the story of his triumphs more grimly than any recital.
The service began in a sharp, fine drizzle of rain, through which his voice sang in shifting cadences, now large and full, now drooping to a premonitory whisper with an undeniably dramatic quality. In spite of myself the words stirred within me. As he read and spoke he laid aside the turns of speech that had become his through years of association with country folk. Almost he was another man.
"Man that is born of woman—"
The words reached down through the overlying structure of thought and habit. I felt a giving and a drawing away; saw the crowd sway to his will.