"You sound confident of that, at least," Lanark smiled back. "Maybe you will help me, after all."
"Maybe I will."
The two gazed into each other's eyes, and then their hands came out, at the same moment. Lanark's lean fingers crushed Jager's coarser ones.
"Let's be gone," urged Lanark at once, but the preacher shook his head emphatically.
"Slowly, slowly," he temporized. "Cool your spirit, and take council. He that ruleth his temper is greater than he that taketh a city." Once more he put out his hand for the cream-colored volume of Albertus Magnus, and began to search through it.
"Do you think to comfort me from that book?" asked Lanark.
"It has more than comfort," Jager assured him. "It has guidance." He found what he was looking for, pulled down his spectacles again, and read aloud:
"'Two wicked eyes have overshadowed me, but three other eyes are overshadowing me—the one of God the Father, the second of God the Son, the third of God the Holy Spirit; they watch my body and soul, my blood and bone; I shall be protected in the name of God.'"
His voice was that of a prayerful man reading Scripture, and Lanark felt moved despite himself. Jager closed the book gently and kept it in his hand.
"Albertus Magnus has many such charms and assurances," he volunteered. "In this small book, less than two hundred pages, I find a score and more of ways for punishing and thwarting evil spirits, or those who summon evil spirits." He shook his head, as if in sudden wrath, and turned up his spectacled eyes. "O Lord!" he muttered. "How long must devils plague us for our sins?"