r, roared above the
tumult:--

"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
the Lord!"

The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.

A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
dying animal.

Maud clung to Milton.

"Oh, can't something be done?"

"Her soul is burdened for _you_!" cried a wild old woman to the
impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.

A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.

She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
hair's breadth during the next two hours.

Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:--

"Jesus, _Jesus_, JESUS!"

The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down,
then leaped up and down, shrieking:--

"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"

Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices.
Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they
strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.

All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the
mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.

One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he
came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and
calculating; they betrayed him.

As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate
girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and
stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared
boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too
rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round,
pretty, but childish faces.

Milton's party retreated. The