At twelve o’clock, even the scoffers were silent.  But as the sultry night drew on toward one o’clock, Bill Day and his party felt their spirits revive a little.  The calculation had failed in one part, and it might in all.  Bill resumed his burlesque exhortations to the rough-looking “brethren” about him.  He tried to lead them in singing some ribald parody of Adventist hymns, but his terror and theirs was too genuine, and their voices died down into husky whispers, and they were more alarmed than ever at discovering the extent of their own demoralization.  The bottle, one of those small-necked, big-bodied quart-bottles that Western topers carry in yellow-cotton handkerchiefs, was passed round.  But even the whisky seemed powerless to neutralize their terror, rather increasing the panic by fuddling their faculties.

“Boys!” said Bob Short, trembling, and sitting down on a stump, “this—­this ere thing—­is a gittin’ serious.  Ef—­well, ef it was to happen—­you know—­you don’t s’pose—­ahem—­you don’t think God A’mighty would be too heavy on a feller.  Do ye?  Ef it was to come to-night, it would be blamed short notice.”

At one o’clock the moon was just about dipping behind the hills, and the great sycamores, standing like giant sentinels on the river’s marge, cast long unearthly shadows across the water, which grew blacker every minute.  The deepening gloom gave all objects in the river valley a weird, distorted look.  This oppressed August.  The landscape seemed an enchanted one, a something seen in a dream or a delirium.  It was as though the change had already come, and the real tangible world had passed away.  He was the more susceptible from the depression caused by the hot sultriness of the night, and his separation from Julia.

He thought he would try to penetrate the crowd to the point where his mother was; then he would be near her, and nearer to Julia if anything happened.  A curious infatuation had taken hold of August.  He knew that it was an infatuation, but he could not shake it off.  He had resolved that in case the trumpet should be heard in the heavens, he would seize Julia and claim her in the very moment of universal dissolution.  He reached his mother, and as he looked into her calm face, ready for the millennium or for anything else “the Father” should decree, he thought she had never seemed more glorious than she did now, sitting with her children about her, almost unmoved by the excitement.  For Mrs. Wehle had come to take everything as from the Heavenly Father.  She had even received honest but thick-headed Gottlieb in this spirit, when he had fallen to her by the Moravian lot, a husband chosen for her by the Lord, whose will was not to be questioned.

August was just about to speak to his mother, when he was forced to hang his head in shame, for there was his father rising to exhort.

“O mine freunde! pe shust immediadely all of de dime retty.  Ton’t led your vait vail already, and ton’t let de debil git no unter holts on ye.  Vatch and pe retty!”