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From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a woman in mortal agony.

“O my God!”

It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart’s palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in it.

The girls clutched Ben and Milton. “Oh, let’s go home!”

“No, let’s go and see what it all is.”

The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to the tent and looked in.

It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.

Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or insolent faces.

The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.

Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back. The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women’s cries moved them in spite of their scorn of it all.

“What cursed foolishness!” said Ben to Milton.

Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was uttering wild and explosive phrases.

“Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be redeemed!”

As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if he were defying hell’s legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his mouth. At every repetition of the word “shall” he struck the desk a resounding blow with his great palm.

“He’s a hard hitter,” said Milton.

At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the mourners’ bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal with his own.

“He ‘SHALL’ send light!”

“Send Thy arrows, O Lord.”

“O God, come!”

“He ‘SHALL’ keep His word!”

One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion’s cry. It rang far out into the night.

The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.

Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.

“A-men, brother.”

“YES, brother, YES!” clapping their hands in rhythm.

The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at applause, carried out of his self-command.

Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.

The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.

The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused, but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip curled in disgust.

Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like a child’s, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.

She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon the ground like a dying partridge.