So get that after me by heart, and use it
freely if thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and
in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he
desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be
turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he
turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote
this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right
numbers to them. For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years
and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to four-score years,
yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it away
and we are gone", and he writes Psalm 90,21. Now I have said that Psalm
with parson verse and verse about for every sleeper we have laid to rest
in churchyard mould for thirty years; and know it hath not twenty verses
in it, all told, and this same verse is the clerk's verse and cometh
tenth, and yet he calls it twenty-first. I wish I had here a Common
Prayer, and I would prove my words.'
He stopped and flung me back the parchment scornfully; but I folded it
and slipped it in my pocket, brooding all the while over a strange
thought that his last words had brought to me. Nor did I tell him that I
had by me my aunt's prayer-book, wishing to examine for myself more
closely whether he was right, after he should have gone.
Pages:
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183