"... it's rising," he proclaimed, in a loud, sing-song voice, "the flood is rising; now it's about your pockets--praise God! now it's above your waists. It's rising! it's rising! Hallelujah! the sea of redemption is rising," his voice rose with the figurative flood. "At last it's about your hearts, your hearts are immersed in the Sacred Tide." A man beside Gordon groaned and dropped upon his knees. A woman cried, "God! God! God!" A spindling, overgrown boy rose fumbling at his throat. "I can't breathe," he choked, "I can't--" His face grew purplish, congested. The tumult swelled, directed, dominated, by the voice of the revivalist. He dropped upon his knees, and, amid the sobbing silence, pled with an invisible Judge hovering, apparently, over a decision to destroy at one bloody blow the recalcitrant peoples of the earth, the peoples of His making. "Spare us," he implored; "spare us, the sheep of hell; lead us to Thy shining pasture ... still water; lead us from the great fire of the eternal pit, from the boiling bodies of the unsaved...." Gordon Makimmon indifferently regarded the clamor. The process of "getting religion" was familiar, commonplace. He saw Tol'able sitting on a back bench; with a mutual gesture the two men rose and left the tent. "I had to bring m'wife," Tol'able explained; "did you see her sitting on the platform? She's one of the main grievers. I got some good licker in the wagon--better have a comforter." They walked down to a dusty, two-seated surrey, where, from under a horse blanket, Tol'able produced a small jug. He wiped the mouth on his sleeve and passed it to Gordon; then held the gurgling vessel to his open throat. "There was some hell raised last night," he proceeded; "a man from up back had his head busted with a stone, and a drunken looney shot through the women's tent: an old girl hollered out they had Goddy right in there among 'em." "They were shooting a while back," Gordon observed indifferently. "Have you seen Buck Simmons here?" "No, I hain't. He wouldn't be here noways." Gordon preserved a discreet silence in regard to his source of assurance of Buckley's presence at the camp meeting. "Have another drink, Gord." The services were temporarily suspended, and the throng emptied from the tent. A renewed sanity clothed them--girls drew into squares of giggling defense against the verbal sallies of robustly-witted young men. Women collected their offspring, gathering in circles about opened boxes of lunch: a multitude of papers and box lids littered the ground. A hot, steaming odor, analogous to coffee, rose from the crowded counter. A prodigious amount of raw whiskey was consumed among the vehicles by the stream and mud-coated willows.