Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/276

 horns like a bull, and grinning tusks like a boar hog, rose up out of the smoke which gradually cleared away until the awful fire from which it came could be seen.

Hundreds of devils smaller than Satan, and all of them with horns and long forked tails, danced around in front of the fire waving their pitchforks and making horrible faces at each other. Mary was almost afraid to look at them for fear she might mark her child on them, and yet she could not pull her eyes away.

As the poor pitiful sinners were dropped down, one at a time, through the mouth of Hell, the devils took them up on their pitchforks and stuck them down in the fire and burned them until they turned to little black creatures no bigger than hop-toads. They hopped and hopped around in the fire until Mary was so sorry for them she wanted to cry. All her life she had heard that sinners had to hop in hell, but she had never understood how awful it was until now.

When the people in the church saw all those terrible things the women began screaming. Some of them fainted and some of them went off into trances. The men were kept busy holding them and trying to comfort them. Mary was scared half to death herself, and she might have