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 down on a rude bench
and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable,
and perhaps terrible conclusion. And so indeed he had. The uneasy
suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution
were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a
man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness
to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing
force. This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed
in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation
of his faith.

"It is absurd, it is impossible, that an infinite Spirit of love and