Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/275

 the pulpit, and Reverend Duncan took his place in front of that to read out of the Book how scarlet sins could be made white as snow. It was a beautiful reading, and with the lightning flashing and the thunder crashing outside it sounded so solemn it reached clear down to the bottom of Mary's heart. "Though you sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Reverend Duncan said nobody living could know how hot Hell was. He said that if all the stumps in the world, not only the stumps on this plantation, but all in the whole world, were dug up and put in a pile; and all the coal down in the bowels of the earth taken out and piled on top those stumps; then all the kerosene and gasoline and gun-powder in the world poured over the pile and set on fire; a sinner who had been in Hell no longer than three short weeks would freeze to death in ten minutes in a fire so cool as that.

The picture of Hell began with clouds of smoke coming out of a bottomless pit; smoke that was far blacker than the smoke from the river boat, and God knew that was black enough. Mary could smell it, and the stench of it was like coal-smoke mixed with burned feathers. It all but choked her. She had to cough to get her breath. Then, Satan's black head, with two