. Their indifference
seemed inhuman to the girl, and she would have stooped to the prostrate
figure but for Shelby's detaining hand.

"Merely the 'Power,' as they say," he whispered, adding cynically,
"Epilepsy can be feigned, you know."

She desisted, and a new actor waltzed rhythmically into the glare of
light. Her short rotund body writhing not unlike an Oriental dancer's,
the Widow Weatherwax had assumed the centre of the ring. The
sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers
were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and
from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh.

"Why doesn't that dreadful woman wear a corset?" demanded Mrs. Hilliard
in a stage whisper of Ruth, whose face went suddenly aflame.

"The widow would make the fortune of any Midway, Ross," Joe Hilliard
chuckled, digging Shelby in the ribs.

"Woe, woe, woe," chanted the widow, spurred to anathema by derision.
"Woe upon scorners! Woe upon them that sit in the seats of scorners!
'Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in
yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.'"

Scripture-quoting was reckoned among the fine arts in the widow's
circle, and an applauding chorus of Praise Gods and Amens greeted her
dexterous use of the beloved weapon. She rounded the chain once more
in her grotesque dance; then, suddenly spying the little group of her
neighbors peering through the girdle of the sanctified, she halted,
directly fronting them, and, singling out Mrs. Hilliard, who was
conspicuous in a red tailor-made gown, she transfixed her with her
beady eyes.

"Woe, woe, woe," she wailed again, rocking to and fro. "Woe upon
Babylon! 'Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the
habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of
every unclean and hateful bird!'"

The brethren thrilled at the well-understood allusion to the speaker's
abiding-place, while the outsiders, scenting a veiled scurrility,
craned to listen and to watch.

Secure of her audience, the widow paused as if waiting the descent of
the prophetic afflatus. Then:--

"'And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not
of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath
remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and
double unto her double acco