had in the bag.

Wall, the believers struck up a him, and sung it through--as mournful,
skairful sort of a him as I ever hearn in my hull life; and it swelled
out and riz up over the pine trees in a wailin', melancholy sort of a
way, and wierd--dretful wierd.

And then a sort of a lurid, wild-looking chap, a minister, got up and
preached the wildest and luridest discourse I ever hearn in my hull
days. It wuz enough to scare a snipe. The very strongest and toughest
men there turned pale, and wimmen cried and wept on every side of me,
and wept and cried.

I, myself, didn't weep. But I drawed nearer to my companion, and kinder
leaned up against him, and looked off on the calm blue heavens, the
serene landscape, and the shinin' blue lake fur away, and thought--jest
as true as I live and breathe, I thought that I didn't care much, if God
willed it to be so, that my Josiah and I should go side by side, that
very day and minute, out of the certainties of this life into the
mysteries of the other, out of the mysteries of this life into
the certainties of the other.

[Illustration: "A SORT OF A LURID, WILD-LOOKING CHAP."]

For, thinks I to myself, we have got to go into that other world pretty
soon, Josiah and me have. And if we went in the usual way, we had got to
go alone, each on us. Terrible thought! We who had been together under
shine and shade, in joy and sorrow. Our two hands that had joined at the
alter, and had clung so clost together ever sence, had got to leggo of
each other down there in front of the dark gateway. Solemn gateway! So
big that the hull world must pass through it--and yet so small that the
hull world has got to go through it alone, one at a time.

My Josiah would have to stand outside and let me go down under the dark,
mysterious arches, alone--and he knows jest how I hate to go anywhere
alone, or else I would have to stop at the gate and bid him good-by. And
no matter how much we knocked at the gate, or how many tears we shed
onto it, we couldn't get through till our time come, we had _got_ to be
parted.

And now if we went on this clear June day through the crystal gateway of
the bendin' heavens--we two would be together for weal or for woe. And
on whatever new, strange landscape we would have to look on, or wander
through, he would be right by me. Whatever strange inhabitants the
celestial country held, he would face 'em with me. Close, close by my
side, he would go with me through that blu