Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/23

 ment as she ran to tell Maum Hannah. That night she told her dream before the deacons at prayer-meeting. After they asked her a few questions about it, and she gave her promise always to try to live as right as she could, never to dance again or sing reel songs, not to lie or steal or be mean or do anything low, they said she might be a candidate for baptism.

Maum Hannah made her a long white baptizing robe, and she was baptized the next first Sunday in the creek back of Heaven's Gate Church. She was terribly scared, for the water was cold and black and the tree roots along the bank looked like snakes, but Reverend Duncan was strong and she knew he would not let her fall. Her baptizing robe was put away in the bottom of the cupboard to be used for her shroud when she died, and her name was no longer Mary but Sister Mary.

She missed dancing, and whenever she heard the big drum beating and the accordion wailing she felt sad, but shouting at prayer-meeting was pleasure and the old hymns and spirituals were beautiful. When the people all sang them together in the fields while they worked, she joined in and felt so holy that cold chills ran up and down her spine.

This last year had been a bad-luck year.