en and shocking that the effect produced on Canaan Township was
profound, not to say awful.

As for Tillie, it was the first event of the kind that had ever come
within her experience, and the religious sentiments in which she had
been reared aroused in her, in common with the rest of the community, a
superstitious fear before this sudden and solemn calling to judgment of
one whom they had all known so familiarly, and who had so wickedly
taken his own life.

During the funeral at the farm-house, she sat in the crowded parlor
where the coffin stood, and though surrounded by people, she felt
strangely alone with this weird mystery of Death which for the first
time she was realizing.

Her mother was in the kitchen with the other farmers' wives of the
neighborhood who were helping to prepare the immense quantity of food
necessary to feed the large crowd that always attended a funeral, every
one of whom, by the etiquette of the county, remained to supper after
the services.

Her father, being among the hired hostlers of the occasion, was outside
in the barn. Mr. Getz was head hostler at every funeral of the
district, being detailed to assist and superintend the work of the
other half dozen men employed to take charge of the "teams" that
belonged to the funeral guests, who came in families, companies, and
crowds. That so well-to-do a farmer as Jake Getz, one who owned his
farm "clear," should make a practice of hiring out as a funeral
hostler, with the humbler farmers who only rented the land they tilled,
was one of the facts which gave him his reputation for being "keen on
the penny."

Adam Schunk, deceased, had been an "Evangelical," but his wife being a
New Mennonite, a sect largely prevailing in southeastern Pennsylvania,
the funeral services were conducted by two ministers, one of them a New
Mennonite and the other an Evangelical. It was the sermon of the New
Mennonite that led to Tillie's conversion.

The New Mennonites being the most puritanic and exclusive of all sects,
earnestly regarding themselves as the custodians of the only absolutely
true light, their ministers insist on certain prerogatives as the
condition of giving their services at a funeral. A New Mennonite
preacher will not consent to preach after a "World's preacher"--he must
have first voice. It was therefore the somber doctrine of fear preached
by the Reverend Brother Abram Underwocht which did its work upon
Tillie's conscience so completely th