ray toward the
hayfield and to-morrow's churning, the door was pushed open, and the
Widow Prime walked in. She was quite unused to seeking her kind, and the
little assembly at once awoke, under the stimulus of surprise. They
knew quite well where she had been walking: to Sudleigh Jail, to visit
her only son, lying there for the third time, not, as usual, for
drunkenness, but for house-breaking. She was a wiry woman, a mass of
muscles animated by an eager energy. Her very hands seemed knotted with
clenching themselves in nervous spasms. Her eyes were black, seeking,
and passionate, and her face had been scored by fine wrinkles, the marks
of anxiety and grief. Her chocolate calico was very clean, and her
palm-leaf shawl and black bonnet were decent in their poverty. The vague
excitement created by her coming continued in a rustling like that of
leaves. The troubles of Hannah Prime's life had been very bitter--so
bitter that she had, as Deacon Pitts once said, after undertaking her
conversion, turned from "me and the house of God." A quickening thought
sprang up now in the little assembly that she was "under conviction,"
and that it had become the present duty of every professor to lead her
to the throne of grace. This was an exigency for which none were
prepared. At so strenuous a challenge, the old conventional ways of
speech fell down and collapsed before them, like creatures filled with
air. Who should minister to one set outside their own comfortable lives
by bitter sorrow and wounded pride? What could they offer a woman who
had, in one way or another, sworn to curse God and die? It was Deacon
Pitts who spoke, but in a tone hushed to the key of the unexpected.

"Has any one an experience to offer? Will any brother or sister lead in
prayer?"

The silence was growing into a thing to be recognized and conquered,
when, to the wonder of her neighbors, Hannah Prime herself rose. She
looked slowly about the room, gazing into every face as if to challenge
an honest understanding. Then she began speaking in a low voice thrilled
by an emotion not yet explained. Unused to expressing herself in public,
she seemed to be feeling her way. The silence, pride, endurance, which
had been her armor for many years, were no longer apparent; she had
thrown down all her defenses with a grave composure, as if life suddenly
summoned her to higher issues.

"I dunno's I've got an experience to offer," she said. "I dunno's it's
religion. I dun