ed
seat, leaned to lay fond hands on her brother's locks. But Hugh
interposed an arm.

"No," he said, "we mustn't do that either."

"No!" said Joy, "dat's right! Fo' de Lawd's sake tek heh clean away--ef
you kin. An' ef you please, good ladies an' gen'lemens, fo' to squeeze
back a leetle mite----?"

They squeezed the mite and she knelt by the boy. The sister knelt too,
but as she left her chair Hugh, taking it, put himself between her and
her brother. The actor was the only one left standing.

"Sing, will you, please," he said--"and will you all sing

"'There is a land of pure delight--'

Mrs. Gilmore, will you raise the tune?"

But the exhorter was too quick for them and "riz" it before the request
was fairly uttered. All sang, and over all easily soared the voice of
the zealot:

"'Thah is a ladnd o' pyo' de-light
Whah saidnts ib-maw-tudl reigdn.
Idn-fidn-ite day dis-pedls the-e night
Adn pleas-u'es badn-ish paidn.'"

Now he rolled his enraptured eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the
rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor
with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through
waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the
nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey,
her arm fell over his bowed form.

"'Thah eveh-last-ign sprign a-bi-dns
Adn nev-eh with-'rign flow-ehs--'"

--ran the hymn, and straight through it, heard everywhere, pressed mammy
Joy's tearful inquiry:

"Is you got religion, honey boy, aw is you on'y got de sickness? Tell
me, honey, which you got? Is you got bofe?"

The lad moaned, shook his head, and suddenly sat up, and cried to his
kneeling and gazing sister: "Neither! Great God, I'm not ready for
either!"--his words, like old Joy's, cutting squarely across the hymn as
it continued:

"'Death like a nor-rah streabm di-vi-dns
This heab'-mly ladnd frobm ow-ehs.'"

Ramsey stood. "Well, don't be alarmed or distressed!" she half laughed,
half wept, while the nurse crooned:

"Honey boy, ef you ain't yit got de sickness----"

"I don't know!" he cried, so loudly that only the Methodists and
Baptists sang on. He sprang up and glanced round to the judge, the
general, the squire, the senator, exclaiming: "I've been right in
it!--to get back that infernal petition of yours when I dropped it! I've
all but touched the dying and the dead! I've been