It looked a little mysterious now, with the many evidences of a large
human occupation in the recent summer, to see this naked town and hollow
pulpit lying so suggestively under the long moan of the pine-trees,
conferring together like dread angels in council, and expressing at
every rising breeze their impatience with the sins of men.
At times the great branches paused awhile, scarcely murmuring, as if
they were brooding on some question propounded in their council, or
listening to human witnesses below; and then they would gravely
converse, as the regular zephyrs moved in and out among them, and pause
again, as if their decision was almost dreaded by themselves. At
intervals, a stern spirit in the pines would rise and thunder and shake
the shafts of the trees, and others would answer him, and patience would
have a season again. And so, with scarcely ever a silence that remained
more than a moment, this council went on all day, continued all night,
was resumed as the sun arose to comfort the world again, ceased not when
the rainbow hung out its perennial assurance upon the storm, and
typified to trembling worshippers the great synod of the Creator, in
everlasting session, ready to smite the world with fire, but suspending
sentence in the evergreen pity of God.
In one of the deserted shells, or "tents," of pine, with neatly shingled
roof, facing the preaching-booth, Joe Johnson and Levin Dennis found
benches, and, at the tall man's example, Levin also lighted a pipe, and
looked out between the escapes of smoke at Tangier Sound, deserted as
this camp-ground on the Sabbath, since the worshippers had reached home
from church in their canoes.
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