News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 82 of 243 (33%)
page 82 of 243 (33%)
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the young man Luke say, "Yourselves, yourselves!"
'I called to him to pick up the lantern; but he did not answer, and the two clinging wretches encumbered me. After a long while the clouds broke and the moon shone through them; and where he had stood there was no one. Also the slab of rock was dark, and the two drowned corpses had vanished with him. I pointed to it; but there was no tinder-box at hand to light the lantern again, and in the bitter weather until the dawn the two clung about me, confessing and rehearsing their sins. 'I have great hopes that they are brought to a better way of life; and because (repent they never so much) no one is any longer likely to recognise in these penitents the originals upon whom it was moulded these many years ago, I am determined to move the statuary to a place in the S. aisle of our parish church, as a memorial, the moral whereof I have leave of John and Grace Magor to declare to all the parish. I choose to defer making it public, in tenderness, while they live: for all things point as yet to the permanent saving of their souls. But, as in the course of nature I shall predecease them, I set the record here in the Parish Register, as its best place. '(Signed) Malachi Hichens, B.D. '21st Jan., 1719.' "And is that all?" I asked. "Yes and no," said the Vicar, closing the book. "It is all that Mr. Hichens has left to help us: and you may or may not connect with it |
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