The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He thrust it resolutely out of his mind. V "I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that I shall excommunicate them all." The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having none of it himself. "They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered. Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new power that had covered it. "You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their damnation be on your head, then." The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock. From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use. His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly attacked the Roman Church. "What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?" There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned from the platform. "Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!"