“O God,” said the sick man, with the obedient simplicity of a child, “I turn my heart and my mind to Thee; do Thou comfort me and take me to Thyself. O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of mankind, do Thou remember me in Thy paradise. Look down upon me, O Lord, a miserable offender, and spare Thou them which confess their faults and are truly penitent.”
With a strange light on his white, wasted face, with his gaunt hands folded on the counterpane before him, the old man sat up in bed and prayed in the same loud voice of pain and semi-delirium. A wild, inconceivable, interminable prayer; for long after they had left the house, old Mansfield could be heard some hundreds of yards away, screaming to God for mercy and consolation.
“We had better leave him praying,” said the vicar softly; “and when he begins cursing and swearing again, Mrs. Mansfield, just kneel down and pray in a loud voice beside him. It will suggest a new current to his thoughts.”
“God won’t count his cursing against him, sir, will he?” asked the little woman. “He were ever a sober Christian man till this misery came on him.”
“No, no,” said the vicar; “God judges the heart, not the tongue of delirium.”
“How old is your husband?” inquired Mrs. Haldane.
“He be eighty-one come Martinmas, ma’am.”
“Poor old man! And you do sewing and knitting, do you not?”
“Yes, ma’am, what he lets me do. He be main fractious whiles.”
“And have you plenty to go on with at present?”