"Happen I may," he said. "He said as bad luck was following me, but I ain't goin' to be stopped by that."
"Best turn him out again to make his ill prophecies in the gutter," said Giles crossly.
The two men were standing in the doorway now, Barnabas having deposited Timothy on his own bed upstairs, and come down to breathe the cool night air.
In Commercial Road the shops and warehouses were still alight; he could hear the continual roar of the traffic, but this little off-street was nearly dark, and the battered figure-head of a ship gleamed ghostly and white in the yard. The preacher stretched himself wearily and then smiled.
"That old Miranda must feel precious queer here," said he. He stepped into the yard, and put his hand on it. He had been sickened by what he had been hearing; his patient, in mortal terror of death, had been pouring forth a crazy confession of iniquities that made the preacher's brain reel, though he had heard a good many "confessions" before now.
Was it possible that any human being could really have committed all these unspeakable horrors, or were they the mad imaginings of a diseased brain? And was Timothy possessed by an unclean spirit, like the people in the Bible whom the Christ cured?
Barnabas at that moment felt that it would be easier to pray for fire from Heaven to destroy, than for healing power to save. Surely it was time for that second coming that should purge the world of its sins! How he hated this place!
Then the touch of the figure-head under his hand brought him a vision of nights at sea; the hum of the great vans in Commercial Road changed to the sound of water, and his soul was refreshed. The everlasting power he had felt near in the salt strength of the sea, in the solemn wideness of his native marshes, in the cold stillness of many an early morning among the hills, was alive still. His heart went out to the strong Maker of all things, with a cry for strength.
"What are you thinking of?" said Giles.
"I was thinking," said the preacher, "that if I was never to see the country again, still I'd ha' been luckier than most o' the people here, seein' I've been bred in it. An' that I've been an unprofitable servant, too easy disgusted and weary in His service; that I've been given much an' done little. I've had a near sight o' the Maker as town folk miss; an' yet I ha' been cold an' out o' heart. I've been thinkin' I'll do more if He'll show me how."