Mother Charnick had a woosted work-bag on her arm. There might have been
a night gown in it, and there might not. It wuz big enough to hold one,
and it looked sort o' bulgy. But it wuz never known--Miss Charnick is a
smart woman. It never wuz known what she had in the bag.

Wall, the believers struck up a him, and sung it through--as mournful,
skairful sort of a him as I ever hearn in my hull life; and it swelled
out and riz up over the pine trees in a wailin', melancholy sort of a
way, and wierd--dretful wierd.

And then a sort of a lurid, wild-looking chap, a minister, got up and
preached the wildest and luridest discourse I ever hearn in my hull
days. It wuz enough to scare a snipe. The very strongest and toughest
men there turned pale, and wimmen cried and wept on every side of me,
and wept and cried.

I, myself, didn't weep. But I drawed nearer to my companion, and kinder
leaned up against him, and looked off on the calm blue heavens, the
serene landscape, and the shinin' blue lake fur away, and thought--jest
as true as I live and breathe, I thought that I didn't care much, if God
willed it to be so, that my Josiah and I should go side by side, that
very day and minute, out of the certainties of this life into the
mysteries of the other, out of the mysteries of this life into
the certainties of the other.

[Illustration: "A SORT OF A LURID, WILD-LOOKING CHAP."]

For, thinks I to myself, we have got to go into that other world pretty
soon, Josiah and me have. And if we went in the usual way, we had got to
go alone, each on us. Terrible thought! We who had been together under