For a
moment, the two held on together, "neck and neck," as the happy boys
afterward remembered, and then Silas got up, dusted his knees, and sat
down, not to rise again at any spiritual call. "An' a madder man you
never see," cried all the Hollow next day, in shocked but gleeful
memory.
Taking it all in all, the meeting had thus far mirrored others of its
class. If the droning experiences were devoid of all human passion, it
was chiefly because they had to be expressed in the phrases of strict
theological usage. There was an unspoken agreement that feelings of
this sort should be described in a certain way. They were not the
affairs of the hearth and market; they were matters pertaining to that
awful entity called the soul, and must be dressed in the fine linen
which she had herself elected to wear.
Suddenly, in a wearisome pause, when minds had begun to stray toward
the hayfield and tomorrow's churning, the door was pushed open, and the
Widow Prime walked in. She was quite unused to seeking her kind, and
the little assembly at once awoke, under the stimulus of surprise. They
knew quite well where she had been walking: to Sudleigh Jail, to visit
her only son, lying there for the third time, not, as usual, for
drunkenness, but for house-breaking.
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