Rhoda, listening outside, behind the screen of vine leaves at the open window, could not repress a shudder at the thought that, had David Powell shown this new power of his a year or two ago, she herself might have been among the convulsed who bore testimony to his terrible influence. "How is that, Mrs. Maxfield?" returned Richard Gibbs. "Why, how can it be, except by abounding grace!" "Nay, Mr. Gibbs, but how dreadful it seems, don't it? Just think of falling down in a fit in the open field!" "Just think of living and dying unawakened to sin! Is not that a hundred thousand times more dreadful?" "I hope it don't need to roll about like Bedlamites to be awakened to a sense of sin, Mr. Gibbs!" cried Seth Maxfield. "The Lord forbid!" ejaculated brother Jackson. "A likely tale!" added Mrs. Seth, cheerfully. "I'm against all such doings," said Roger Heath, shaking his head. "But if it be the Lord's doing, sir?" remonstrated Richard Gibbs, speaking slowly, and with an anxious lack-lustre gaze at the white-washed ceiling, as though counsel might be read there. "And I've heard tell that John Wesley did the same at his field-preachings." Brother Jackson hastily wiped his mouth, after a deep draught of ale, before replying, "That was in the beginning, when such things may have been needful. But now, I fear, they only bring scandal upon us, and strengthen scoffers." "I tell you what it is," said Seth, taking the pipe from his mouth, and waving it up and down to emphasise his words, "it's my opinion as David Powell's not quite--not quite right in his head." "'Taint the first time that thought has crossed my mind," said the baker, who had once upon a time been uneasy under the yoke of Powell's stern views as to weights and measures. "Of course," pursued Seth, argumentatively, "we've got to draw a line. Religion is one thing and rampaging is another. From the first, when Powell began rampaging, I mistrusted what it would come to." "The human brain is a very delicate and mysterious organ," said brother Jackson. "Ah!" ejaculated Heath, with an air of profundity, as of one the extent of whose acquaintance with the human brain was not easily to be set forth in words, "you may well say so, sir. There you're right, indeed, brother Jackson." "Why, there it is!" cried Seth. "And Powell, he overtaxed the human brain. It's like flying in the face of Providence almost, to want to go so much beyond your neighbours. Why, he'd fast till he well-nigh starved himself." "But he gave all he spared from his own stomach to the poor," put in Gibbs, looking sad and perplexed. "I call all that rampaging," returned Seth, with a touch of his father's obstinacy.