“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”
“‘Peace’—‘peace.’” Broome looked about him, half dazed, groping in the void of his own spiritual habitation for an explanation of what he saw.
“There’s sure peace good an’ plenty in these diggings,” he muttered, “if that’s what a man’s aimin’ to locate; peace enough to drive him loco. Guess that’s what ails him. He must be a jumpin’ luny to go scratchin’ round like this.... There’s another one!”
He espied it on the wall over the pallet where he had slept.
“I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for Thou Lord only, makest me dwell in safety.”
Gard had written that the day after the night of terror when storm had devastated the glade; written it remembering how his mother had taught it to him, an imaginative little chap, afraid of the dark. He had been saying his prayers one night, beside his cot in the shed-chamber, when he became afraid the SOMETHING was coming through the gloom to grab him from behind as he knelt. His mother, coming to tuck him up, found him cowering under the blankets and winning from him the secret of his fright, sat down beside him and taught him the beautiful verse. Broome, reading it now, experienced a feeling of dread.
“Peace again,” he growled, “I hope he gets peace enough with all his bug-house slate-writing. The feller’s hell on religion; shouldn’t wonder if he was a preacher.”
He turned away with an awed shiver.
“Gosh!” he ejaculated, “I’m glad I didn’t see that over my head last night. I couldn’t a’ slept a wink.”
He went outside again to fill and drink another cup of acorn coffee, and when his bodily hunger was satisfied left the debris of his meal on the hearth and wandered about the glade, seeking gratification of his objective curiosity.