hborhood knew that Mrs.
Pitts had been laid low by an attack of erysipelas, and that she was, at
the moment, in a dark bedroom at home, helpless under elderblow.)

"She lays there on a bed of pain," said the deacon. "But she says to me,
'You go. Better the house o' mournin' than the house o' feastin',' she
says. Oh, my friends! what can be more blessed than the counsel of an
aged and feeble companion?"

The deacon sat down, and Tom Drake, his finger on the pea-shooter,
assured himself, in acute mental triumph, that he had almost done it
that time.

Then followed certain incidents eminently pleasing to the boys. To their
unbounded relief, Sarah Frances Giles rose to speak, weeping as she
began. She always wept at prayer meeting, though at the very moment of
asserting her joy that she cherished a hope, and her gratitude that she
was so nearly at an end of this earthly pilgrimage and ready to take her
stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire. The boys reveled in her
testimony. They were in a state of bitter uneasiness before she rose,
and gnawed with a consuming impatience until she began to cry. Then they
wondered if she could possibly leave out the sea of glass; and when it
duly came, they gave a sigh of satiated bliss and sank into acquiescence
in whatever might happen. This was a rich occasion to their souls, for
Silas Marden, who was seldom moved by the spirit, fell upon his knees to
pray; but at the same unlucky instant, his sister-in-law, for whom he
cherished an unbounded scorn, rose (being "nigh-eyed" and ignorant of
his priority) and began to speak. For a moment, the two held on
together, "neck and neck," as the happy boys afterward remembered, and
then Silas got up, dusted his knees, and sat down, not to rise again at
any spiritual call. "An' a madder man you never see," cried all the
Hollow next day, in shocked but gleeful memory.

Taking it all in all, the meeting had thus far mirrored others of its
class. If the droning experiences were devoid of all human passion, it
was chiefly because they had to be expressed in the phrases of strict
theological usage. There was an unspoken agreement that feelings of this
sort should be described in a certain way. They were not the affairs of
the hearth and market; they were matters pertaining to that awful entity
called the soul, and must be dressed in the fine linen which she had
herself elected to wear.

Suddenly, in a wearisome pause, when minds had begun to st