The psychological moment was upon them.  Groans and cries arose, and a palpable ferment stirred the throng.  The exhortation to sinners to declare themselves, to come to the altar, was not only on the revivalist’s lips:  it seemed to quiver in the very air, to be borne on every inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the brethren.  A young woman, with a dazed and startled look in her eyes, rose in the body of the church tremblingly hesitated for a moment, and then, with bowed head and blushing cheeks, pressed her way out from the end of a crowded pew and down the aisle to the rail.  A triumphant outburst of welcoming ejaculations swelled to the roof as she knelt there, and under its impetus others followed her example.  With interspersed snatches of song and shouted encouragements the excitement reached its height only when twoscore people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon their knees about the rail, and in the space opening upon the aisle.  Above the confusion of penitential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmurings of members whose conviction of entire sanctity kept them in their seats, could be heard the voices of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and the elderly deacons of the church, who moved about among the kneeling mourners, bending over them and patting their shoulders, and calling out to them:  “Fasten your thoughts on Jesus!” “Oh, the Precious Blood!” “Blessed be His Name!” “Seek Him, and you shall find Him!” “Cling to Jesus, and Him Crucified!”

The Rev. Theron Ware did not, with the others, descend from the pulpit.  Seated where he could not see Sister Soulsby, he had failed utterly to be moved by the wave of enthusiasm she had evoked.  What he heard her say disappointed him.  He had expected from her more originality, more spice of her own idiomatic, individual sort.  He viewed with a cold sense of aloofness the evidences of her success when they began to come forward and abase themselves at the altar.  The instant resolve that, come what might, he would not go down there among them, sprang up ready-made in his mind.  He saw his two companions pass him and descend the pulpit stairs, and their action only hardened his resolution.  If an excuse were needed, he was presiding, and the place to preside in was the pulpit.  But he waived in his mind the whole question of an excuse.

After a little, he put his hand over his face, leaning the elbow forward on the reading-desk.  The scene below would have thrilled him to the marrow six months—­yes, three months ago.  He put a finger across his eyes now, to half shut it out.  The spectacle of these silly young “mourners”—­kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they could not tell what, pledging themselves frantically to dogmas and mysteries they knew nothing of, under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as meaningless in their way, and inspiring in much the same way, as the racket of a fife and drum corps—­the spectacle saddened and humiliated him now.  He was conscious of a dawning sense of shame at being even tacitly responsible for such a thing.  His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr. Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin and unseemly scene, and he felt his face grow hot at the bare thought.