Curly's grandfather had been the
artist of the occasion. In the middle of this door stood the awful
prophecy, surrounded on every side by the fall of the faded tears; and
for anything anybody knew, it might have been a supernatural exudation
from the damp old church, full of decay for many a dreary winter.
Dreadful places, those churches, hollow and echoing all the week! I
wonder if the souls of idle parsons are condemned to haunt them, and
that is what gives them that musty odour and that exhausting air.
Glamerton was variously affected by this condensation of the vapour of
prophecy into a definite prediction.
"What think ye o' 't, Thomas Crann?" said Andrew Constable. "The
calcleation seems to be a' correck. Yet somehoo I canna believe in't."
"Dinna fash yer heid aboot it, Anerew. There's a heep o' judgments
atween this an' the hinner en'. The Lord'll come whan naebody's luikin'
for him. And sae we maun be aye ready. Ilka year's an anno dominy. But
I dinna think the man that made that calcleation as ye ca' 't 's jist
a'thegeether infallible. An' for ae thing, he's forgotten to mak'
allooance for the laip years."
"The day's by, than!" exclaimed Andrew, in a tone contrasting pretty
strongly with his previous expressions of unbelief.
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