"Ah Lawton," he said. "Is it possible that you did not know it? Can it be that you do not understand? Poor Sims is dead, Lawton, a brave man, but not of good physique. The evening was quite too much for him. Do not take it so hard, man! We all must die, you among the rest. You should have known me better, Lawton. You should have known I would not allow myself to be taken prisoner."
"What!" shouted Mr. Lawton. "What the devil are you then?"
The scene appeared to move my father, for he sighed again, and paused, the better to enjoy it.
"Only a poor man," he said, "only a poor chattel of the Lord's, a poor frail jug that has gone too often to the well. A poor man of a blackened reputation, who has been set upon by spies of France, and threatened in his own house, but who has managed to escape—" and his voice became sharp and hard.
"Take Mr. Lawton's pistol, Ned."
There fell a moment's silence in the room while my father, a little in advance of the rest of us, stared fixedly into my uncle's eyes.
"Set upon by spies," he said, "persecuted and driven. It has set me thinking, Jason. As I walked back here tonight, I still was thinking, and can you imagine what was on my mind? It was you, Jason, you and Lawton. And as I thought of you, my mind fell, as it naturally would, on holy things, and a piece of the Scripture came back to me. Think of it, Jason, a piece of the Holy Writ. Would you care to hear it?"
My father paused to adjust a wrinkle in his coat, and then his voice became solemn and sonorous, and he spoke the words with metrical precision.
"'To everything'," said my father, "there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die'."
He paused long enough to nod from one to the other.