lm
with parson verse and verse about for every sleeper we have laid to rest
in churchyard mould for thirty years; and know it hath not twenty verses
in it, all told, and this same verse is the clerk's verse and cometh
tenth, and yet he calls it twenty-first. I wish I had here a Common
Prayer, and I would prove my words.'

He stopped and flung me back the parchment scornfully; but I folded it
and slipped it in my pocket, brooding all the while over a strange
thought that his last words had brought to me. Nor did I tell him that I
had by me my aunt's prayer-book, wishing to examine for myself more
closely whether he was right, after he should have gone.

'I must be away,' he said at last, 'though loath to leave this good fire
and liquor. I would fain wait till Elzevir was back, and fainer till this
gale was spent, but it may not be; the nights are short, and I must be
out of Purbeck before sunrise. So tell Block what I say, that he and thou
must flit; and pass the flask, for I have fifteen miles to walk against
the wind, and must keep off these midnight chills.'

He drank again, and then rose to his feet, shaking himself like a dog;
and walking briskly across the cave twice or thrice to make sure, as I
thought, that the Ararat milk had not confused his steps. Then he shook
my hand warmly, and disappeared in the deep shadow of the passage-mouth.

The wind was blowing more fitfully than before, and there was some sign
of a lull between the gusts. I stood at the opening of the passage, and
listened till the echo of Ratsey's footsteps died away, and then
returning to the corner, flung more wood on the fire, and lit the candle.
After that I took out again the parchment, and also my aunt's red
prayer-book, and sat down to study them. First I looked out in the book
that text about the 'days of our life', and found that it was indeed in
the ninetieth Psalm, but the tenth verse, just as Ratsey said, and not
the twenty-first as it was writ on the parchment. And then I took the
second text, and here again the Psalm was given correct, but the verse
was two, and not six, as my scribe had it. It was just the same with the
other three--the number of the Psalm was right but the verse wrong. So
here was a discovery, for all was painfully written smooth and clean
without a blot, and yet in every verse an error. But if the second number
did not stand for the verse, what else should it mean? I had scarce
formed the question to myself befo