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She sank down in her seat and wept quietly, while the impressionable African temperament sent forth pious ejaculations: “Holp, Lawd!” “Fotch comfort!” “Bless de mo’nahs!” The schoolmistress was in tears, and the stalwart young man near her openly wiped his eyes. Brother Moore bent his brows; even Brother Morrow winked hard: but Sister Susannah’s emotion was most in evidence; she was sobbing violently into a pink-embroidered handkerchief. Presently she rose to her feet. Now Susannah was the woman who had lured the wretched murderer through a brutal passion to a brutal crime, and the eyes of the congregation were focused upon her.

“Bruddahs, sistahs,” said Susannah, in her wonderful voice, with its chords of plaintive music, which made her hearers grin out of sheer emotion, “I nev’ did aim to do dat po’ young man hurt; but he sayd t’ings to me, t’ings”–she sighed and hung her head–“he hadn’t orter have sayd, him bein’ a married man; an’ I be’n right mad at him, an’ I own up I done him right onchristian an’ onmussiful, for I didn’t show no sympathy or even go see ‘m hanged. Now, I do repent. But it ain’t nare preachin’ of Sist’ Humphreys done give me a brokin an’ a contrary hairt. Her scorchin’ don’ make me mo’n. Hit cakes up my hairt. She nev’ did have one single revival. Rev. Bulkely of de Ridge he does have a mighty big one ever’ spring; you kin hear de screeches ‘mos’ a mile! He tol’ me hisse’f he w’u’d be willin’ to minister a spell to dis sorely tried flock, an’, mo’-ovah, he tol’ me dat we-all c’u’dn’t have Sist’ Humphreys nor no woman preach to us; for it be’n ag’in’ de rule of de Baptis’ Chu’ch. Hit be’n forbid. We cayn’t be Baptis’ an’ keep Sist’ Humphreys.”

With meek grace Susannah resumed her seat and the sheltering support of the blacksmith’s arm. She had won. Now that a way of escape was opened,–a way, moreover, ending in a dazzling vista of a “big revival,”–no sympathy for the Widow Macklin could induce Zion to face the fiery chariots of the Seventh Commandment driven by Sister Humphreys.

In spite of the schoolmistress’ eloquence and the stumbling speech of two boys who tried to tell that Sister Humphreys had done a heap for them, when the vote was put, only six of the forty-eight persons present voted to retain the preacher. Brother Moore declined to vote.

Susannah watched the downcast faces of Sister Humphreys’ supporters through her half-shut eyes and smiled her languid, mysterious smile.

But of a sudden one of the two striplings who had spoken for Sister Humphreys left his place by the window and ran to the door.

With instant premonition of peril, the flock of Zion turned on the benches. A deep intake of breath signified their dismay as there entered a tall brown woman in widow’s weeds. She cast a calm, full eye over the faces under the lamplights–faces already stricken awry with fear; for, notwithstanding their numbers and apparent strength of position, dread of the pastor insisted, as light insists through closed eyelids.

Sister Humphreys walked with no pause to the platform. Brother Morrow was so short a man and she was so tall a woman that her handsome head towered above his. She was a brown negro, but her lighter color and her regular features and thinner, more sensitive lips were due to no admixture of white blood; they came from a dash of the yellow races mixed long before her time in the Old World, where her ancestors were barbaric princes. She stood with the incomparable grace that is given sometimes to the bearer of burdens, tall, erect, shapely. She spoke in a mellow rich voice not raised a note above its speaking tone.

“Is this heah a meetin’?” gently interrogated Sister Humphreys of Brother Morrow, “or have you-all done aju’ned?”

“We done aju’ned, sistah,” Brother Morrow replied quickly, flinching from a possible trap.