Harry’s whispering was almost shrill in the heat of his passion, and the singing of the hymn became faint and thin, so eager were the singers to catch a word of that most significant conversation.  Dick had not taken his eyes off the pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about Chris and the young man.  Christina Shine had only recently been raised to the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged his sense of poetical fitness.  He espoused her cause with his whole soul, whatever it might be.

The young woman in the stress of her fears had clasped Harry’s arm, as if to restrain him, and he felt the soft agitation of her gentle bosom with a new emotion that weakened his tense thews, and stirred the first doubt; but he fought it down.  His revenge had become almost a necessity within the last three days.  Nothing he had heard offered the faintest hope for his brother’s cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general unquestioning belief in Frank’s guilt, and a dozen times had been compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his pugilistic knowledge.  Of late years he had been schooled in a class that accepted ‘a ready left’ as the most convincing argument, and, being beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with all its grievances to a twenty-four-foot ‘ring’ and an experienced referee.  But whilst there was a little diffidence amongst the men in expressing their opinions about Frank, there was no reserve when they came to tell of Ephraim Shine’s method of improving the occasion with prayer and preachment; and for a considerable time Harry had collected bitterness till it threatened to choke him and bade him defy all his mother’s cautious principles.

Ephraim had given out the third verse, and the singing went on.

‘Are you thinking?’ whispered the girl.  ’Do, do think!  Think of the disgrace of it.’

’Disgrace!  There’s the disgrace whining on the platform, the brute that insults a woman in her sorrow, thinking there’s no one handy to take it out of the coward hide of him!

’It was wrong, Harry.  I know it was wrong and cruel.  I told him that, and he has promised me never to do it again.  He has promised me that, really, truly.’

The word that slid through Harry’s teeth was ferocious but inaudible.

’Say you won’t do it!

The singing ceased suddenly, and the superintendent, who all the time had kept a lowering and anxious eye on the young couple, gave out the third verse again.

’Harry, you will not.  Please say it!

The hand holding the stockwhip stirred threateningly, and the hymn was almost lost in the agitation of the worshippers.  Chris remained silent, and Harry, who had taken the book again, had shifted his stern eyes to the slim white thumb beside his broad brown one.  A stifled sob at his side startled him, and he turned a swift glance upon the face of his companion.  That one glance, the first, left his brave resolution shaken and his spirit awed.