the rest that come to her after the pain of sinnin' had gone
out of her body. But you'll not be so squeamish about the way folks
look when they air dead after a while. We had one pastor's wife that
helped lay out fourteen bodies. But that was the year of the
epidemic," she concluded, leaning over to stretch the shroud sheet.
Little did I think then that I was already upon the eve of an
experience that would far eclipse the record of that other preacher's
wife.

We found Sister Salter lying dim and white upon her bed, surrounded by
her family and friends. And the supreme tragedy of the hour for them
was not her approaching dissolution, but it was that one who had
testified so often and so victoriously of her faith had lost it at the
crucial moment.

What followed is impossible to describe. It was not the terrible
silence in the crowded room, not the battling breath and the shriveling
features of the woman in the bed, not by contrast the green and happy
calm of the world outside, but it was the awful voice of authority with
which William spoke of things that no man knows, that frightened and
thrilled us. If he had called me so from a grave where I had lain a
thousand years I should have had to put on my dust, rise and answer
him. He sat beside the bed and looked as Peter must have looked at
Dorcas as she lay dead in the upper chamber of her house at Joppa. It
was not the text he quoted, nor the hymns he chanted, but it was the
way he did it. Clearly he was adding his faith to her forlorn hope.
We saw her face change as if she had risen and was treading the waters
in her spirit to meet an invisible presence. The fading light of the
summer day showed the same rapt look on it that was there when she
shouted that first Sunday at Redwine, and she passed like a sudden
gleam into the darkness of the coming night.

William's joy was beautiful to see, but I had a sense of intrusion as
if I had parted the wings of some archangel and had seen more
brightness than it was lawful for a mortal to behold. So long as we
are on this earth it seems to me better to follow the example of Moses
and turn our backs when the Lord passes by, so that we shall see only
the glory of His hinder parts.

The death of Sister Salter marked the beginning of an epidemic, or
rather the return of the same one they had had some years before. It
swept through the community with such deadly results that not a family
escaped. And I had another v