squint, was ripped at the edge, and the unmistakable sheen of a
snake's scale glistened in the seam. Simpson could not keep his eyes
from it.

He dared to be more formal after that, and on the next night preached
from a text--the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." That sermon
also was effective: toward the end of it two or three women were
weeping a little, and the sight of their tears warmed him with the
sense of power. In that warmth certain of his prejudices and
inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and
sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared
the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in
emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing
whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse
strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure
of the moral beauty of restraint, and ardours which he had never
dreamed of began to flame free of his soul.

He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first
had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely,
so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at
the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He
wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came
fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the
deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed
somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at
times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable
intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was
afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination,
not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and
with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was
not far wrong.

Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce
ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous;
rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that
in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and,
since he could find in French none that had associations for himself,
he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those
of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes
forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or
three times