“Reckon there won’t be much fighting for a chap of my age. But I’ll be useful in my way. I hear they’re short of farriers and smiths. Besides, they’re calling up all fit men under fifty, and I can’t claim exemption as a minister, seeing I ain’t one; and reckon Mr. Smith ull go now Randall Cantuar and Charles John Chichester have said he may.... So I’m off to Lewes to-morrow, Mrs. Tom.”
“We shall miss you unaccountable. Besides, it aun’t the life fur a man lik you.”
He laughed. “That’s just where you’re wrong—it’s the very proper life for a man like me, it’s the life I should have been leading the last thirty years. Howsoever, it’s not too late to mend, and reckon I’ll be glad to have my part in the big job at last. Here’s thirty years that I’ve been preaching the Day of the Lord, and now’s my chance of helping that day through a bit.”
He stood up and pushed back his chair.
“Oh, doan’t be going yit, Mus’ Sumption.”
“Reckon I must—I’ve all sorts of things to do. Don’t be sorry for me—I’m doing the happiest thing I ever did as well as the best. I’ll be doing the work I was born for, and I’ll be helping the world through judgment, and I’ll be doing what I owe my boy—your boy—all the boys that are dead.”
Thyrza’s eyes filled with tears when he spoke of Tom. For a moment he seemed to forget his surroundings, and to fancy himself back in the pulpit he had renounced, for he held up his hand and his voice came throatily:
“Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble. But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.... Oh, Thyrza, the world is sown over with young, brave lives, and it’s our job to see that they are not as the seed scattered by the wayside, sown in vain. Reckon we must water them with our tears and manure them with our works, and so we shall quicken the harvest of Aceldama, when our beloved shall rise again....”
His voice strangled a little; then he continued in his ordinary tones: