We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather
partial to blind man's holiday--not to mention that oil is oil, and
that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford
to do that. But there it is--Take care of the pence."
To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there
among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the
correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the
harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.
They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For
a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every
cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight
up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn
would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of
blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to
produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but
almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing
solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set
him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the
hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn
itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and
to nobody else.
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