“I'm searched terrible—I can see through me,” cried Kelly, the postman.
Some were chiefly troubled lest death should fall on them while they were in a public-house.
“I keep none,” cried Cæsar.
“But you wouldn't let us open the door,” whined the farmer.
If the door had been wide enough for a Bishop, not a soul would have stirred. For the first time within anyone's recollection, Nancy Joe was on her knees.
“O Lord,” she prayed, “Thou knowest well I don't often bother Thee. But save Kate, Lord; oh, save and prasarve my little Kirry! It's twenty years and better since I asked anything of Thee before and if Thou wilt only take away this wind, I'll promise not to say another prayer for twenty years more.”
“Say it in Manx, woman,” moaned Grannie. “I always say my prayers in Manx as well, and the Lord can listen to the one He knows best.”
“There's prayer as well as praise in singing,” cried Cæsar; and they began to sing, all down on their knees, their eyes tightly closed, and their hands clasped before their faces. They sang of heaven and its peaceful plains, its blue lakes and sunny skies, its golden cities and emerald gates, its temples and its tabernacles, where “congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end.” It was some comfort to drown with the wild discord of their own voices the fearful noises of the tempest. When they finished the hymn, they began on it again, keeping it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing, they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second time, and Cæsar cried—
“Again, brothers,” and away they went with another wild whoop through the hymn.
It came a third time, and Cæsar cried—