By this time the color began to rise in the minister's cheeks. He looked
at the retreating back of Fiddling Boss, and then suspiciously down at
the row of men, but every one of them sat with folded arms and eyes
intent upon the sermon, as if their comrades had not left them. The
minister thought he must have been mistaken and took up the broken
thread once more, or tried to, but he had hopelessly lost the place in
his manuscript, and the only clue that offered was a quotation of a poem
about the devil; to be sure, the connection was somewhat abrupt, but he
clutched it with his eye gratefully and began reading it dramatically:

"'Men don't believe in the devil now
As their fathers used to do--'"

But he had got no further when a whole clearing-house of throats
sounded, and Fade-away Forbes stumbled to his feet frantically, bolting
down the aisle as if he had been sent for. He had not quite reached the
door when Stocky clumped after him, followed at intervals by Croaker and
Fudge, and each just as the minister had begun:

"Um! Ah! To resume--"

And now only Jasper Kemp remained of the front-seaters, his fine gray
eyes boring through and through the minister as he floundered through
the remaining portion of his manuscript up to the point where it began,
"And finally--" which opened with another poem:

"'I need no Christ to die for me.'"

The sturdy, gray-haired Scotchman suddenly lowered his folded arms,
slapping a hand resoundingly on each knee, bent his shoulders the better
to pull himself to his feet, pressing his weight on his hands till his
elbows were akimbo, uttered a deep sigh and a, "Yes--well--_ah_!"

With that he got to his feet and dragged them slowly out of the
school-house.

By this time the minister was ready to burst with indignation. Never
before in all the bombastic days of his egotism had he been so grossly
insulted, and by such rude creatures! And yet there was really nothing
that could be said or done. These men appeared to be simple creatures
who had wandered in idly, perhaps for a few moments' amusement, and,
finding the discourse above their caliber, had innocently wandered out
again. That was the way it had been made to appear. But his plans had
been cruelly upset by such actions, and he was mortified in the extreme.
His face was purple with his emotions, and he struggled and spluttered
for a way out of his trying dilemma. At last he spoke, and his voice was
absurdly dignif