A hen clucking to her chicks went across the road before him.  The little yellow balls ran briskly forward on their wiry legs, darting at invisible insects, turning their shiny black eyes about alertly and filling the air with their sweet, thin pipings.  Nathaniel stopped to watch them, and as he noticed the pompously important air with which one of the tiny creatures scratched the ground with his ineffectual little feet, cocking his eye upon the spot afterward as if to estimate the amount of progress made, the boy laughed out loud.  He started at the sound and glanced around him hurriedly, moving on to the meeting-house from which there now burst forth a harshly intoned psalm.  He lingered for a moment at the door, gazing back at the translucent greens of the distant birches gleaming against the black pines.  A gust of air perfumed with shad-blossom blew past him, and with this in his nostrils he entered the whitewashed interior and made his way on tiptoe up the bare boards of the aisle.

II

After meeting the women and children walked home to set out the cold viands for the Sabbath dinner, while the men stood in a group on the green before the door for a few minutes’ conversation.

“Verily, Master Everett, the breath of the Almighty was in your words this day as never before,” said one of them.  “One more such visitation of the anger of God and your son will be saved.”

“How looked he when they bore him out?” asked the minister faintly.  His face was very white.

The other continued, “Truly, reverend sir, your setting forth of the devil lying in wait for the thoughtless, and the lake burning with brimstone, did almost affright me who for many years now have known myself to be of the elect.  I could not wonder that terrors melted the soul of your son.”

“How looked he when they bore him out?” repeated the minister impatiently.

The other answered encouragingly, “More like death than life, so the women say.”  The minister waved the men aside and went swiftly down the street.  The hen and chickens fled with shrill cries at his approach, and the old negress stopped her song.  After he had passed she chuckled slowly to herself, thrust her head up sideways to get the sun in a new place, and began her crooning chant afresh.

“How is the boy?” asked the minister of his wife as he stepped inside the door.  “Not still screaming out and——­”

Mistress Everett shook her head reassuringly.  “Nay, he is quiet now, up in his room.”

Nathaniel lay on his trundle bed, his eyes fixed on the rafters, his pale lips drawn back.  At the sight his father sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.  The boy sprang upon him with a cry, “Oh, father, I see fire always there—­last winter when I burned my finger—­oh, always such pain!”

The minister’s voice broke as he said, “Oh, Nathaniel, the blessed ease when all this travail is gone by and thou knowest thyself to be of the elect.”