Philip's rigid fingers were crawling over the papers on the table like the claws of crabs. They touched the summons from the Chancery Court, and he picked it up.
“Read this,” he said, and held it out to Cæsar.
Cæsar took it, but continued to look at Philip with eyes that were threatening in their wildness. Philip felt that in a moment their positions had been changed. He was the judge no longer, but only a criminal at the bar of this old man, this grim fanatic, half-mad already with religious mania.
“The Lord of Hosts is mighty,” muttered Cæsar; and then Philip heard the paper crinkle in his hand.
Cæsar was feeling for his spectacles. When he had liberated them from the sheath, he put them on the bridge of his nose upside down. With the two glasses against the wrinkles of his forehead and his eyes still uncovered, he held the paper at arm's length and tried to read it. Then he took out his red print handkerchief to dust the spectacles. Fumbling spectacles and sheath and handkerchief and paper in his trembling hands together, he muttered again in a quavering voice, as if to fortify himself against what he was to see, “The Lord of Hosts is mighty.”
He read the paper at length, and there was no mistaking it. “Quilliam v. Quilliam and Christian (Philip).”
He laid the summons on the table, and returned his spectacles to their sheath. His breathing made noises in his nostrils. “Ugh cha nee!” (woe is me), he muttered. “Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee!”
Then he looked helplessly around and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
The vengeance that he had built up day by day had fallen in a moment into ruins. His hypocrisy was stripped naked. “I see how it is,” he said in a hoarse voice. “The Lord has de-ceaved me to punish me. It is the public-house. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. What's gained on the devil's back is lost under his belly. I thought I was a child of God, but the deceitfulness of riches has choked the word. Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee! My prosperity has been like the quails, only given with the intent of choking me. Ugh cha nee!”
His spiritual pride was broken down. The Almighty had refused to be made a tool of. He took up his hat and rolled his arm over it the wrong way of the nap. Half-way to the door he paused. “Well, I'll be laving you; good-day, sir,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “The Lord's been knowing what you were all the time seemingly. But what's the use of His knowing—He never tells on nobody. And I've been calling on sinners to flee from the wrath, and He's been letting the devils make a mock at myself! Ugh cha nee! Ugh cha nee!”