The girl did not look up. She clung to him more closely and buried her face on his breast.
"Yes, father dear, but if what you asked in your prayer was wrong, were you a righteous man? Could your prayer have any power?"
It was her last stroke—she trembled as she made it. There was a dead silence in the room. She heard the slow clock ticking on the mantel, the wind whistling in the chimney. Then her father's breast was shaken, his head fell upon her shoulder, his tears rained upon her neck.
"Thank God," he cried, "I was a sinner—it was not a prayer—God be merciful to me a sinner!"
THE RETURN OF THE CHARM
I
"Nor I," cried John Harcourt, pulling up in the moon-silvered mist and clapping his hand to his pocket, "not a groat! Stay, here is a crooked sixpence of King James that none but a fool would take. The merry robbers left me that for luck."
Dick Barton growled as he turned in his saddle. "We must ride on, then, till we find a cousin to loan us a few pounds. Sir Empty-purse fares ill at an inn."