yet mine would be
the prayer of the humble, and wasn't Faith of as much consequence as a
sparrow? By-and-by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words
of a hymn that I'd heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang
them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan 'd never
heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting
mother to sleep; but here I had a whole sky to sing in, and the hymns
were trumpet-calls. And one after another they kept thronging up, and
there was a rush of feeling in them that made you shiver, and as I sang
them they thrilled me through and through. Wide as the way before us
was, it seemed to widen; I felt myself journeying with some vast host
towards the city of God, and its light poured over us, and there was
nothing but joy and love and praise and exulting expectancy in my heart.
And when the hymn died on my lips because the words were too faint and
the tune was too weak for the ecstasy, and when the silence had soothed
me back again, I turned and saw Dan's lips bitten, and his cheek white,
and his eyes like stars, and Mr. Gabriel's face fallen forward in his
hands, and he shaking with quick sobs; and as for Faith,--Faith, she
had dropped asleep, and one arm was thrown above her head, and the other
lay where it had slipped from Mr. Gabriel's loosened grasp. There's a
contagion, you know, in such things, but Faith was never of the catching
kind.

Well, this wasn't what we'd come for,--turning all out-doors into a
church,--though what's a church but a place of God's presence? and for
my part, I never see high blue sky and sunshine without feeling that.
And all of a sudden there came a school of mackerel splashing and
darkening and curling round the boat, after the bait we'd thrown out on
anchoring. 'Twould have done you good to see Dan just at that moment;
you'd have realized what it was to have a calling. He started up,
forgetting everything else, his face all flushed, his eyes like coals,
his mouth tight and his tongue silent; and how many hooks he had out I'm
sure I don't know, but he kept jerking them in by twos and threes, and
finally they bit at the bare barb and were taken without any bait at
all, just as if they'd come and asked to be caught. Mr. Gabriel, he
didn't pay any attention at first, but Dan called to him to stir
himself, and so gradually he worked back into his old mood; but he was
more still and something sad all the rest of the mo