they are a spell against Spirits of Evil, and I was reading
them to keep off the loneliness of this place, when you came in and made
me drop them.'

I was afraid lest he should ask whence I had got them, but he did not,
thinking perhaps that my aunt had given them to me. The heat of the
flames had curled the parchment a little, and he spread it out on his
knee, conning it in the firelight.

''Tis well written,' he said, 'and good verses enough, but he who put
them together for a spell knew little how to keep off evil spirits, for
this would not keep a flea from a black cat. I could do ten times better
myself, being not without some little understanding of such things,' and
he nodded seriously; 'and though I never yet met any from the other
world, they would not take me unprepared if they should come. For I have
spent half my life in graveyard or church, and 'twould be as foolish to
move about such places and have no words to meet an evil visitor withal,
as to bear money on a lonely road without a pistol. So one day, after
Parson Glennie had preached from Habakkuk, how that "the vision is for an
appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it
tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry", I
talked with him on these matters, and got from him three or four rousing
texts such as spectres fear more than a burned child does the fire. I
will learn them all to thee some day, but for the moment take this Latin
which I got by heart: "_Abite a me in ignem etemum qui paratus est
diabolo at angelis ejus."_ Englished it means: "Depart from me into
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels," but hath at least
double that power in Latin. So get that after me by heart, and use it
freely if thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and
in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he
desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be
turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he
turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote
this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right
numbers to them. For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years
and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to four-score years,
yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it away
and we are gone", and he writes Psalm 90,21. Now I have said that Psa