What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled for a moment almost into something like peace, and--now--this puff of smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer?
He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid that he would see--something--if he looked behind him. He was afraid that he would in another moment hear something--a voice!
He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable cause, and not meant for him.
He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the white pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke.
He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There was no further doubt. He would go to hell--to hell! To burn forever! Forever--even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. He began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames.
He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his fingers and eyes in the quest.
"Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming," he read in Isaiah, and he took it to himself.
"Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof," he read in Ezekiel.
He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every repetition of the word "fire" the flesh cringed and crawled on his bones. God! To burn! How it must hurt!
"And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God," met his eyes in the first book of Kings.
And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring over the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a traveling spark, and was gone.