This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these awful sounds I hear?" At this point he made a pause, which would have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin. "Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow. "Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom." "Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending to deal out summary justice to some one. He was a man of immense strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole party. But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence. Mr. Mellen was perplexed. A disembodied voice wandering about the room would have been too much for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!" And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door. _CHAPTER VIII._ A LESSON IN SYNTAX.