ce
had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the
pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the
walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew still
as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.

"I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel
now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stovepipe. "I
can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat
and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's
devouring flame! I can see him _now_! He seizes a poor, damned,
struggling soul by the _neck_, he holds him over the flaming forge of
_hell_ till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in the
flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel
flings him back into _outer darkness_; life was not in him."

It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom
Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect upon others was painful. To
see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential
stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people
fell crying, whereat the old people burst out into amens of spasmodic
fervor, while the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes, tore up
and down, crying above the tumult:--

"The Lord is come with _power_! His hand is visible _here_. Shout
_aloud_ and spare _not_. Fall before him as _dust_ to his feet!
Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the _lash_ o' the _Lord_ is on ye!"

In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant,
uplifted face--a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their
breath--a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the intense
hush.

"S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a-bearun' down on the boys a _leetle too_ hard?"

The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face
flushed and paled; the people laughed hysterically, some of them with
the tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo,
Bacon!"

Pill recovered himself.

"Not hard enough for _you_, neighbor Bacon."

Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:--

"I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be _yanked_
into heaven when I c'n _slide_ into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've
got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."

The effect of all this was very great. From being at the very mouth of
the furnace, quiv