The heat of the day, the reaction from the long week in the open air, the quiet monotony of the well modulated voice rising and falling in regular cadence in what is supposed by so many preachers to be the tone suitable for any sacred office, produced an overwhelmingly somnolent effect.

Many of them slept, some frankly and openly, others under cover of shading hands, bowed heads, or other subterfuges.

Others again spent the whole of the period of the sermon, except for some delicious moments of surreptitious sleep, in a painful but altogether commendable struggle against the insidious influence of the god of slumber.
Among the latter was Mrs.Innes, whose loyalty to her minister, which was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a vigorous fight against her much too solid flesh.

It was a certain aid to wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber, kept her in a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund little masses of slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor.

There was also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr.McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude, relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep.