"'Thah is a ladnd o' pyo' de-light Whah saidnts ib-maw-tudl reigdn. Idn-fidn-ite day dis-pedls the-e night Adn pleas-u'es badn-ish paidn.'" Now he rolled his enraptured eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey, her arm fell over his bowed form. "'Thah eveh-last-ign sprign a-bi-dns Adn nev-eh with-'rign flow-ehs--'" --ran the hymn, and straight through it, heard everywhere, pressed mammy Joy's tearful inquiry: "Is you got religion, honey boy, aw is you on'y got de sickness? Tell me, honey, which you got? Is you got bofe?" The lad moaned, shook his head, and suddenly sat up, and cried to his kneeling and gazing sister: "Neither! Great God, I'm not ready for either!"--his words, like old Joy's, cutting squarely across the hymn as it continued: "'Death like a nor-rah streabm di-vi-dns This heab'-mly ladnd frobm ow-ehs.'" Ramsey stood. "Well, don't be alarmed or distressed!" she half laughed, half wept, while the nurse crooned: "Honey boy, ef you ain't yit got de sickness----" "I don't know!" he cried, so loudly that only the Methodists and Baptists sang on. He sprang up and glanced round to the judge, the general, the squire, the senator, exclaiming: "I've been right in it!--to get back that infernal petition of yours when I dropped it! I've all but touched the dying and the dead! I've been handled all over by men who'd been handling them! Whatever I've caught from them I'll know is a judgment! For at last I've got a sense of sin! Right down under here behind this boat's engines I got it! I want you-all people to pray for me! I've been an awful sinner for years!" "So have I!" wept Ramsey aloud. "Praise de Lawd!" said Joy, from her knees. Mrs. Gilmore drew Ramsey backward and shared a chair with her. The exhorter and a stout few hung to the hymn-- "'Whi-dle Jur-dan ro-dled be-tweedn,'" --and the terrified boy talked on through everything, no one edging away from him as the wise might in these days. "I'm not fitt'n' to die, Mr. Gilmore," he said. "That petition's not my worst sin--by half--by quarter. But it's opened my eyes. You-all that got it up, and you-all that signed it, it would open yours, one look below; and I want you-all, right here, now, to tell God you take it back, before he lays his curse on me! You can manage that somehow, Mr. manager, can't you? Can't somebody pray it? Or--or can't--can't you vote on it?" "Yes," broke in Ramsey, clung to by the player's wife but standing and glancing from the player so directly to the senator that all looked at him, "vote! vote!"