A very profound impression was made by one sermon especially, on a subject on which Neville seldom preached, but which on this occasion was strangely impressed upon his mind. The text was that sublime Scripture and its context: "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." The solemn impression of the sermon was greatly deepened by the singing, to a weird wailing sort of tune, of the hymn which followed. The hymn, whose majesty of imagery--a majesty derived from the Scriptures themselves--and whose resonant cadence gave it much of the character, in English, of the sublime _Dies Irae_, in Latin, was as follows:-- "The chariot! the chariot!--its wheels roll in fire, As the Lord cometh down in the pomp of His ire; Lo! self-moving, it drives on its pathway of cloud, And the heavens with the glory of God-head are bowed. "The trumpet! the trumpet! the dead all have heard, Lo! the depths of the stone-covered charnel are stirred! From the sea, from the earth, from the south, from the north, All the vast generations of men are come forth. "The judgment! the judgment!--the thrones are all set, Where the Lamb and the white-vested elders are met! There all flesh is at once in the sight of the Lord, And the doom of eternity hangs on His word." A picket of soldiers was billeted in the village, several of whom attended the meeting ostensibly for the purpose of making game of the "Yankee preacher." But such was the intense earnestness of the man and the spiritual power that attended his message, that all attempts to "make game" of the services were soon abandoned, and not a few who "came to mock remained to pray." A deep seriousness pervaded the entire neighbourhood. The usual winter amusements and dancing parties were, to a great extent, forgone--and even the utilitarian paring bees in the great farm kitchens were shorn of much of the fun and frolic and divinings of the future by means of apple-parings thrown over the left shoulders, or apple-seeds roasted on the hearth. The present was felt to be too sad, and the future too full of foreboding to encourage fore-readings of the book of fate. The great revival was the subject of fireside conversation at many hearths, and of deep questionings in many hearts. Some of the most notorious ill-livers of the neighbourhood had experienced the emancipating spell of the Truth that maketh free, and were no longer the slaves of vice and drunkenness. Katharine Drayton pondered these things in her heart. She was conscious of many good impulses, and her life had been marked by many generous and noble traits. But she felt in her inmost soul that these alone would not suffice. She could not from her heart repeat the words which she often sang in the congregation with her lips,--