But over them all floated the same question. It stared from every eye, was whispered by every lip: “Who is it, O Lord, whom Thy hand seeks?”
A man in the gloomy crowd which had gone westward, and struggled up Broby hill, stopped a minute before the path which led up to the house of the mean Broby clergyman. He picked up a dry stick from the ground and threw it upon the path.
“Dry as that stick have the prayers been which he has given our Lord,” said the man.
He who walked next to him also stopped. He took up a dry branch and threw it where the stick had fallen.
“That is the proper offering to that priest,” he said.
The third in the crowd followed the others’ example.
“He has been like the drought; sticks and straw are all that he has let us keep.”
The fourth said: “We give him back what he has given us.”
And the fifth: “For a perpetual disgrace I throw this to him. May he dry up and wither away like this branch!”