een
arches of the splendid grove.

The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.

Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben
drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open
flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women
were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls
like figures in a pantomime.

The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment,
tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging,
monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.

"Come to the _Lord_! Come _now_! Come to the _light_! Jesus will give
it! _Now_ is the appointed time,--come to the _light_!"

From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a
woman in mortal agony.

"O my God!"

It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's
palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in
it.

The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"

"No, let's go and see what it all is."

The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
the tent and looked in.

It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.

Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
insolent faces.

The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.

Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
them in spite of their scorn of it all.

"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.

Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
uttering wild and explosive phrases.

"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
redeemed!"

As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a