He was a grim sight now, was Nicholas Bly. His ragged clothes hung and flapped on him as on a scarecrow. His cheeks were sunken and patched with a dirty grey stubble. His eyes glared feverishly out of red sockets, and they seemed to see nothing but to be asking for a sight of something. There was a sort of film on them, but the light in the man shone through it. His shoulders were bowed and his thin arms hung limply by his side, but always his face was upturned, and he shook as he walked, like a flame.
The malady in him drove him to the heights. His desire was to be near the sky. Presently he forsook the towns and went from one range of hills to another seeking the highest in Fatland.
At last after many days he reached the highest hill, and there he lay flat on his face and would neither eat nor drink. By his side sat the widow Martin, and she made certain that he was going to die, and produced two pennies to lay upon his eyelids when death should come.
On the third day he turned over on his back and said:
“Jah is coming.”
And it was so.
Up the steep path came a man with a great beard and a huge nose and eyes that twinkled with the light of merriment and shone with the tenderness of irony, and blazed with the fire of genius. By his side walked a slim dark figure, and with a joyful cry the widow Martin declared it to be Mr. Nicodemus.
Nicholas Bly sat up and began to rehearse all the curses that in his bitterness he had prepared.
XVII: JAH
He began: