"Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
"Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.
"As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him; as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.
"As he clothed himself with cursing like as with a garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.
"Let it be unto him as a garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
"But do Thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy name's sake. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
"I am come like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.
"My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness."
From that time the hundred and ninth Psalm became familiar to the villagers, and there were probably not many who did not get it by heart. There was no doubt in their minds of the poor shoemaker's innocence. Every one knew that he was incapable of hurting a fly. The crowd had gone into his shop and swept him away with them—all were in it; and some person seeing the hammer had taken it to help in smashing the machinery. And Mr. Ellerby had known in his heart that he was innocent, and if he had spoken a word for him in court he would have got the benefit of the doubt and been discharged. But no, he wanted to have his revenge on some one, and he held his peace and allowed this poor fellow to be made the victim. Then, when he died, and his eldest son succeeded him at Doveton Farm, and he and the other sons got married, and there were no children, or none born alive, they went back to the Psalm again and read and re-read and quoted the words: "Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out." Undoubtedly the curse was on them!
Alas! it was; the curse was their belief in the curse, and the dreadful effect of the knowledge of it on a woman's mind—all the result of Mr. Ellerby the father's fatal mistake in not having thrown the scrap of paper that came to him from the other side of the world into the fire. All the unhappiness of the "generation following" came about in this way, and the family came to an end; for when the last of the Ellerbys died at a great age there was not one person of the name left in that part of Wiltshire.