Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/209

 prayed aloud for her soul, then and there, the tears of contrition streaming down her cheeks as she openly confessed to all of those past sins which she could remember. Then Jappie Barrison choked back her own sobs, and less raptly and more shamefacedly told of her own misdoings, while Lulu Bird rocked her body back and forth and begged that the world should not come to an end until all her sins had been washed away.

Then Em'ly and her neophytes kissed one another, and finding that the mysterious passion which had shaken their young lives to the root had already passed and died away, as strangely as it had come, they hid their Bible and Sunday School book under a ledge of sand, and escaped back to the world of realities again, wonderingly, a little frightened of one another, and of themselves.

All of this strange ceremony Lonely O'Malley heard and saw from the half-hidden mouth of his sand-pit cave, where he stood, spell-bound and speechless.

It even made him feel creepy, tingling with the same little pricks of the skin as those which ran over him when errand or