The congregation responded in a timid inarticulate gabble, above which rose Deacon Bradleys loud voice, -- Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler. The snare is broken and we are escaped. He read the responses in a slow, booming roar, at least half a sentence behind the rest, but the minister always waited for him. As he finished, he saw the sexton standing in the open door. A little more steam, Jehiel, he added commandingly, running the words on to the end of the text.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they
Where should he go? He was dazed by the unlimited possibilities before him. To Boston first, as the nearest seaport. He had taken the trip in his mind so many times that he knew the exact minute when the train would cross the state line and he would be really escaped from the net which had bound him all his life. From Boston to Jamaica as the nearest place that was quite, quite different from Vermont. He had no desire to see Europe or England. Life there was too much like what he had known. He wanted to be in a country where nothing should remind him of his past. From Jamaica where? His stiff old fingers painfully traced out a steamship line to the Isthmus and thence to Colombia. He knew nothing about that country. All the better. It would be the more foreign. Only this he knew, that nobody in that tropical country farmed it, and that was where he wanted to go. From Colombia around the Cape to Argentina. He was aghast at the cost, but instantly decided that he would go steerage. There would be more