Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/72

 very first verse had an instantaneously depressing effect upon the girl. Not that it was a hymn she disliked; it was "Onward, Christian Soldiers," which she loved and had chosen. But here was a new, hoarse voice braying out of tune in her ear, and she was only too well aware whose voice it was. Anything more painful, anything so raucous, ear-splitting, and grotesque, Irralie had never heard. It stabbed her nerves like the squeak of a slate-pencil. It was no more certain of a note than a drunken man of his steps. And it came from lips which Irralie had so recently suspected of falsehood and deceit, that, but for the incident of the tennis-racket, her new-born faith had been once more shaken to its base.

As it was she found herself disillusioned and disappointed in the hour of relief. And the most mortifying moment of all was when, in the second hymn, the infliction suddenly ceased, and the honest, painstaking, sure-footed bass of George Young (which it had drowned) was heard for the