Having finished the lesson, he closed the volume and began to pray.  Now that his eyes were shut, the strangeness of the situation vanished entirely.  He was no longer alone, for God was with him.  The petition was full of devotion, tenderness and faith, and as he poured it forth his countenance beamed like that of an angel.  When it was finished he began the sermon.  The first few words were scarcely audible.  The thoughts were disconnected and fragmentary.  He suffered an unfamiliar and painful embarrassment, but struggled on, and his thoughts cleared themselves like a brook by flowing.  Each effort resulted in a greater facility of utterance, and soon the joy of triumph began to inspire him.  The old confidence returned at last and his soul, filled with faith and hope and fervor, poured itself forth in a full torrent.  He began to be awed by the conjecture that his errand had some extraordinary although hidden import.  Who could tell what mission these words were to accomplish in the plans of God?  He remembered that the waves made by the smallest pebble flung into the ocean widen and widen until they touch the farthest shore, and he flung the pebbles of his speech into the great ocean of thought, transported by the hope of sometime learning that their waves had beat upon the shores of a distant universe.

Suddenly, in the midst of this tumultuous rush of speech, he heard, or thought he heard, a sound.  It seemed to him like a sob and there followed stumbling footsteps as of some one in hurried flight, but he was too absorbed to be more than dimly conscious of anything save his own emotions.

And yet, slight as was this interruption, it served to agitate his mind and bring him down from the realms of imagination to the world of reality.  His thoughts began to flow less easily and his tongue occasionally to stammer; the strangeness of his experience came back upon him with redoubled force; the chill influence of vacancy and emptiness oppressed him; his enthusiasm waned; what he was doing began to seem foolish and even silly.

Just at that critical moment there occurred one of those trifling incidents which so often produce results ridiculously disproportionate to their apparent importance.  Through the open door to which his back was turned, a little snake had made its way into the room, and having writhed silently across the floor, coiled itself upon the hearth-stone, faced the speaker, looked solemnly at him with its beady eyes, and occasionally thrust out its forked tongue as if in relish of his words.

That fixed and inscrutable gaze completed the confusion of the orator.  He suddenly ceased to speak, and stood staring at the serpent.  His face became impassive and expressionless; the pupils of his eyes dilated; his lips remained apart; the last word seemed frozen on his tongue.  Not a shade of thought could be traced on his countenance and yet he must have been thinking, for he suddenly collapsed, sank