But already Seth Upham's mind was racing away on another tack.
"Aye, loaded with the blessed weight of salvation. Didn't my old mother, God bless her, teach me at her knee that a man's soul can never die? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name—"
Staring at him in horror, we saw that he was not blasphemous. The words came reverently from his weak lips. He simply was mad.
Suddenly in a high-pitched voice, he began to sing,
"Low at Thy gracious feet I bend,
My God, my everlasting friend."
He sang three stanzas of the hymn in a way that appalled every one of those three men who of us all, I think, were least easily appalled—indeed, I think that for once they were more appalled than the rest of us; certainly none of them had Arnold's composure or Abe's obvious, almost overpowering sympathy for poor Seth Upham. Then he stopped and faced about with eyes strangely aflame. In his manner now there was all his old imperiousness and something more, an almost noble dignity, a commanding enthusiasm, which, whether it came from madness alone or whether it had always been in him, got respect even from Matterson and O'Hara.
"I am going to meet my God face to face at the throne of Judgment," he cried.
It was the first time in days that he had addressed us directly, and he spoke with a fierce intensity that amazed us; then, before we guessed what was in his disordered mind, before a man of us could stop him, he stepped outside the door and flung his arms straight out like a cross, and with his head thrown back marched, singing, into the darkness.
"By Heaven!" Gleazen gasped, "he has set sail now for the port of Kingdom Come!"