She lay panting and sweating across the bent and broken roots of the oak.
The hand of Elspeth was gone but the song was still there. She rose trembling and listened. It was the singing of the Big Meeting in the church far away.
She had forgotten this religious revival in her days of hurried preparation, and the preacher had used her absence and apparent indifference against her and her work. The hand of Elspeth was reaching from the grave to pull her back; but she was no longer dreaming now.
Drawing her shawl about her, she hurried down the highway.
The meeting had overflowed the church and spread to the edge of the swamp. The tops of young trees had been bent down and interlaced to form a covering and benches twined to their trunks. Thus a low and wide cathedral, all green and silver in the starlight, lay packed with a living mass of black folk. Flaming pine torches burned above the devotees; the rhythm of their