ream or a delirium. It was as
though the change had already come, and the real tangible world had
passed away. He was the more susceptible from the depression caused by
the hot sultriness of the night, and his separation from Julia.

He thought he would try to penetrate the crowd to the point where his
mother was; then he would be near her, and nearer to Julia if anything
happened. A curious infatuation had taken hold of August. He knew that
it was an infatuation, but he could not shake it off. He had resolved
that in case the trumpet should be heard in the heavens, he would seize
Julia and claim her in the very moment of universal dissolution. He
reached his mother, and as he looked into her calm face, ready for the
millennium or for anything else "the Father" should decree, he thought
she had never seemed more glorious than she did now, sitting with her
children about her, almost unmoved by the excitement. For Mrs. Wehle had
come to take everything as from the Heavenly Father. She had even
received honest but thick-headed Gottlieb in this spirit, when he had
fallen to her by the Moravian lot, a husband chosen for her by the Lord,
whose will was not to be questioned.

August was just about to speak to his mother, when he was forced to hang
his head in shame, for there was his father rising to exhort.

"O mine freunde! pe shust immediadely all of de dime retty. Ton't led
your vait vail already, and ton't let de debil git no unter holts on ye.
Vatch and pe retty!"

And August could hear the derisive shouts of Bill Day's party, who had
recovered their courage, crying out, "Go it, ole Dutchman! I'll bet on
you!" He clenched his fist in anger, but his mother's eyes, looking at
him with quiet rebuke, pacified him in a moment. Yet he could not help
wondering whether blundering kinsfolk made people blush in the
next world.

"Holt on doo de last ent!" continued Gottlieb. "It's pout goom! Kood
pye, ole moon! You koes town, you nebber gooms pack no more already."

This exhortation might have proceeded in this strain indefinitely, to
the mortification of August and the amusement of the profane, had there
not just at that moment broken upon the sultry stillness of the night
one of those crescendo thunder-bursts, beginning in a distant rumble,
and swelling out louder and still louder, until it ended with a
tremendous detonation. In the strange light of the setting moon, while
everybody's attention was engrossed by the exciteme