“And you know why, sir,” I accused him. “You know why!”
“Dannie,” says he, “ye’ve wished for this hour.”
“And I am ready, sir.”
He drew then from his pocket a small Bible, much stained and wrinkled by water, which he put on the table between us. “Dannie, lad,” says he, “do ye now go t’ your own little room, where ye was used t’ lyin’, long ago, when ye was a little lad.” He lifted himself in the chair, turned upon me––his eyes frankly wet. “Do ye go there,” says he, “an’ kneel, like ye used t’ do in the days when ye was but a little child, an’ do ye say, once again, for my sake, Dannie, the twenty-third psa’m.”
I rose upon this holy errand.
“‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” my uncle repeated, looking away to the fool’s great Gates, “‘I shall not want.’”
That he should not.
“‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.’”
And so it should be.