Then McFarquhar fell into great distress and looked at me imploringly. I rose and went into the next room, closing the door behind me. Then, though I tried to make a noise with the chairs, there rose the sound of McFarquhar's voice; but not with the cadence of the Gaelic prayer. He had no gift in the English language, he said; but evidently Ould Michael thought otherwise, for he cared no more for Gaelic prayers.
By degrees McFarquhar began to hope that Ould Michael would come to the light, but there was a terrible lack in the old soldier of "conviction of sin." One day, however, in his reading he came to the words, "the Captain of our Salvation."
"Captain, did ye say?" said Ould Michael.
"Ay, Captain!" said McFarquhar, surprised at the old man's eager face.
"And what's his rigimint?"
Then McFarquhar, who had grown quick in following Ould Michael's thoughts, read one by one all the words that picture the Christian life as a warfare, ending up with that grand outburst of that noblest of Christian soldiers, "I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith." The splendid loyalty of it appealed to Ould Michael.
"McFarquhar," he said with quivering voice, "I don't understand much that ye've been sayin' to me, but if the war is still goin' on, an' if he's afther recruits any more bedad it's mesilf wud like to join."
McFarquhar was now at home; vividly he set before Ould Michael the warfare appointed unto men against the world, the flesh and the Devil; and then, with a quick turn, he said:
"An' He is calling to all true men, 'Follow me!'"
"An' wud He have the like av me?" asked Ould Michael, doubtfully.