rst time varied. He began to
hold his hickory up at certain pauses in the melody, and beat the
changes upon the sides of his astonished steed. The chorus under this
arrangement was:

I'm _glad_ salvation's _free_,
I'm _glad_ salvation's _free_,
I'm _glad_ salvation's _free_ for _all_,
I'm _glad_ salvation's _free_.

Wherever there is an italic, the hickory descended. It fell about as
regularly and after the fashion of the stick beating upon the bass
drum during a funeral march. But the beast, although convinced that
something serious was impending, did not consider a funeral march
appropriate for the occasion. He protested, at first, with vigorous
whiskings of his tail and a rapid shifting of his ears. Finding these
demonstrations unavailing, and convinced that some urgent cause for
hurry had suddenly invaded the elder's serenity, as it had his own, he
began to cover the ground with frantic leaps that would have surprised
his owner could he have realized what was going on. But Elder Brown's
eyes were half closed, and he was singing at the top of his voice.
Lost in a trance of divine exaltation, for he felt the effects of the
invigorating motion, bent only on making the air ring with the lines
which he dimly imagined were drawing upon him the eyes of the whole
female congregation, he was supremely unconscious that his beast was
hurrying.

And thus the excursion proceeded, until suddenly a shote, surprised in
his calm search for roots in a fence corner, darted into the road, and
stood for an instant gazing upon the newcomers with that idiotic stare
which only a pig can imitate. The sudden appearance of this
unlooked-for apparition acted strongly upon the donkey. With one
supreme effort he collected himself into a motionless mass of matter,
bracing his front legs wide apart; that is to say, he stopped short.
There he stood, returning the pig's idiotic stare with an interest
which must have led to the presumption that never before in all his
varied life had he seen such a singular little creature. End over end
went the man of prayer, finally bringing up full length in the sand,
striking just as he should have shouted "free" for the fourth time in
his glorious chorus.

Fully convinced that his alarm had been well founded, the shote sped
out from under the gigantic missile hurled at him by the donkey, and
scampered down the road, turning first one ear and then the other to
detect any sounds of pursuit. The donk