She spoke slowly, though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any transition of ideas.

There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her voice, and when she came to the question, "Will God take care of us when we die ?" she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that the tears came into some of the hardest eyes.

The stranger had ceased to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher, until she came to the words, "Lost!--Sinners!" when there was a great change in her voice and manner.

She had made a long pause before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts that showed themselves in her features.

Her pale face became paler; the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears half-gather without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an expression of appalled pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a destroying angel hovering over the heads of the people.