"Vain is the help of man," said Yabel, as he turned to go in, "and if God will not help me, I will renounce Him also."
He sat awhile by Janet's side, and it was very quiet, save for the clock ticking out the moments of a woman's life. A hen cackled without in the yard with sudden joy over an egg safely nested. Yabel started up angrily and laid his hand on his gun in the rack above the smoked mantel-board. But the woman's eyes called him to desist, and he sat down again beside her with a sigh.
"What is it, Jen? Can ye no speak to me?" The eyes seemed to compel him yet lower—upon his knees.
"To pray—I canna pray, Jen; I winna pray. If the Lord tak's you, I will arise and curse Him to His face."
The direction of the gaze changed. It was upon the family Bible on the shelf, where it lay with Boston's Fourfold State and a penny almanack, the entire family library.
"Am I to read?" said Yabel, reaching it down. "What am I to read?" He ran down the table of contents with his great stub-nailed fingers, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus." But the speaking eyes did not check him till he came to the Psalms.
He turned them over till he came to the twenty-third. The will in his wife's glance stopped him again. He read the psalm slowly, kneeling on his knees by the bedside.
At the fourth verse his voice changed. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me——"
And at the sound of these words the unstricken left hand of his wife wavered upward uncertainly. It lay a moment, with something in its touch between a caress and a blessing, upon his head. Then it dropped lightly back upon the coverlet.
* * * * *