handled all over by
men who'd been handling them! Whatever I've caught from them I'll know
is a judgment! For at last I've got a sense of sin! Right down under
here behind this boat's engines I got it! I want you-all people to pray
for me! I've been an awful sinner for years!"

"So have I!" wept Ramsey aloud.

"Praise de Lawd!" said Joy, from her knees.

Mrs. Gilmore drew Ramsey backward and shared a chair with her. The
exhorter and a stout few hung to the hymn--

"'Whi-dle Jur-dan ro-dled be-tweedn,'"

--and the terrified boy talked on through everything, no one edging away
from him as the wise might in these days.

"I'm not fitt'n' to die, Mr. Gilmore," he said. "That petition's not my
worst sin--by half--by quarter. But it's opened my eyes. You-all that
got it up, and you-all that signed it, it would open yours, one look
below; and I want you-all, right here, now, to tell God you take it
back, before he lays his curse on me! You can manage that somehow, Mr.
manager, can't you? Can't somebody pray it? Or--or can't--can't you vote
on it?"

"Yes," broke in Ramsey, clung to by the player's wife but standing and
glancing from the player so directly to the senator that all looked at
him, "vote! vote!"

He gave the player the sort of nod one gives an auctioneer, and the
singers stopped. "I think we can," said the actor, "and that if the
senator votes yea so will every one. All in favor of withdrawing the
petition raise the right hand. It is unanimous."

The exhorter was up. "Mr. play-actoh, that's all right. I neveh signed
that trick, nohow. So fah so good, fo' a play-acto's church--ef you kin
git sich a church into the imagination o' yo' mind! But vot'n' ain't
enough!" He pointed to Ramsey, fast in Mrs. Gilmore's arms, and to her
brother, in old Joy's. "Vot'n' don't take heh--naw him--out'n the gall
o' bittehness naw the bounds o' iniquity. Oh, my young silk-an'-satin
sisteh, don't you want us to pray fo' you?"

Ramsey's courage was tried. Many gazers, but particularly the judge's
sister, seemed, by their eyes, crouching to pounce on her whether she
answered yea or nay. "I know," she said, in tears again, and
unconsciously wringing her hands, "I know I ought to, but--but I--I'm
afraid there isn't time. For I want--oh, I--I want to vote again! I want
to vote to take up a collection, and a big one, for those people
down-stairs that mom-a's with. And then we can pray for her--and for
Captain Courteney. Mom-