“The prayer-book’s in the church, brother,” said the parson.
Then the squire got up and opened a drawer in the little side table, and took out a well-worn book with a red cover.
“There’s the mother’s book,” he said. “Read on. We’ll fight it out to the last.”
Then the parson of the parish turned his heavy chair round towards the light, and knelt up against the back of it, for his bones were something too stiff to reach the floor.
“What—what do you want to pray for, brother?” he said.
“What?” cried the squire with an oath, “that my fool of a son may get here before the clock strikes twelve, and save his honour and his house. Can’t you find a prayer? Read the first in the book. The Almighty’ll understand it.”
The squire leant his elbows on the card-table and his forehead on his hands. Mr Maxwell of Ouseley stood up decorously, and held his three-cornered hat before his face.
And the parson turned to the evening service, and read it straight through sonorously. The words implored pardon and peace, and light in darkness; but they carried but one prayer up to the throne of Heaven, “Let him come.”
Then the parson began the Litany till he came to the travellers by land and by water, when he rustled over the leaves of his book, and behold there was a mark in the prayer for those at sea, which did not run so ill in a storm of trouble and distress. “Save, Lord, or else we perish,” he said, and the squire groaned and said, “Amen.”
And through the storm and the loud rough voice the clock ticked and struck, quarter, half-hour, and three quarters, till at last, with his rough voice shaking and growing thick, and his dull old heart beating fit to choke him, the parson found himself reading the prayer for “All sorts and conditions of men.”