"He ain't the only one," Ern answered. "I'm fairly up against it, too." Grinning quietly at his victory, he turned down the passage to the study.
His father was sitting in his favourite spot under the picture of his ancestor, watching the tree-tops blowing in the Rectory garden opposite. The familiar brown-paper-clad New Testament was on his knee.
Ernie marked at once that here was the one tranquil spirit he had met since the declaration of war. And this was not the calm of stagnation. Rather it was the intense quiet of the wheel which revolves so swiftly that it appears to be still.
He drew his chair beside his father's.
"What d'you make of it all, dad?" he asked gently.
The old man took his thumb out of his New Testament, and laid his hand upon his son's.
"And behold there was a great earthquake," he quoted. "For the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door of the Tomb."
Ernie nodded thoughtfully. For the first time perhaps the awful solemnity of the drama in which he was about to play his part came home to him in all its overwhelming power.
"Yes, dad," he said deeply. "Only I reck'n it took some rolling."
The old man gripped and kneaded the hand in his just as Ruth would do in moments of stress.