lent meal--it was to find the
interior of the church densely packed, and people being turned away from
the doors.

Theron was supposed to preside over what followed, and he did sit on
the central chair in the pulpit, between the Presiding Elder and Brother
Soulsby, and on the several needful occasions did rise and perfunctorily
make the formal remarks required of him. The Elder preached a short,
but vigorously phrased sermon. The Soulsbys sang three or four times--on
each occasion with familiar hymnal words set to novel, concerted
music--and then separately exhorted the assemblage. The husband's part
seemed well done. If his speech lacked some of the fire of the divine
girdings which older Methodists recalled, it still led straight, and
with kindling fervency, up to a season of power. The wife took up the
word as he sat down. She had risen from one of the side-seats; and,
speaking as she walked, she moved forward till she stood within the
altar-rail, immediately under the pulpit, and from this place, facing
the listening throng, she delivered her harangue. Those who watched
her words most intently got the least sense of meaning from them.
The phrases were all familiar enough--"Jesus a very present help,"
"Sprinkled by the Blood," "Comforted by the Word," "Sanctified by the
Spirit," "Born into the Kingdom," and a hundred others--but it was as in
the case of her singing: the words were old; the music was new.

What Sister Soulsby said did not matter. The way she said it--the
splendid, searching sweep of her great eyes; the vibrating roll of
her voice, now full of tears, now scornful, now boldly, jubilantly
triumphant; the sympathetic swaying of her willowy figure under the
stress of her eloquence--was all wonderful. When she had finished, and
stood, flushed and panting, beneath the shadow of the pulpit, she
held up a hand deprecatingly as the resounding "Amens!" and "Bless the
Lords!" began to well up about her.

"You have heard us sing," she said, smiling to apologize for her
shortness of breath. "Now we want to hear you sing!"

Her husband had risen as she spoke, and on the instant, with a far
greater volume of voice than they had hitherto disclosed, the two began
"From Greenland's Icy Mountains," in the old, familiar tune. It did
not need Sister Soulsby's urgent and dramatic gesture to lift people to
their feet. The whole assemblage sprang up, and, under the guidance of
these two powerful leading voices, thundered