"I have worked for thirty years and more for very little more than that."
"Aye, but you believe that you are working in a holy cause, so that the work itself is enough, and you're content while you can pay your way. All work ought to be in a holy cause and done in a holy spirit. . . . I used to think that when I was a young man. I used to feel it too. I think so now, but I don't feel it any more. These things just go on, and I sit and watch them and do nothing, and I understand why everyone else does nothing either. It's the old men who profit by it all and the young men are never wise enough to overturn it, and they could so easily by refusing to step into the old men's shoes. But we must all grow old."
"The youngest time in all my life," said Francis, "was during the years after I first came here, when I had to fight to do things in my own way in my own church."
"Exactly," said old Lawrie. "That's it. The fighting; the fighting to do things in your own way, in your own life; if you can do it, if you can keep it up, and hold out to the very end."
Francis pounced on that as an opportunity of coming to his mission, and he set forth all that he had to say about Bennett.
Old Lawrie received it in blank astonishment.
"Well, well," he said. "Wants to be a parson, does he? Is it the clothes he's after? He was always a great one for dressing up."
"I think it is more serious with him than that. I think it is very serious."
Old Lawrie thought for a long time and tugged at his beard, while Francis gazed at him and said to himself what a fine face the old fellow had.
"Do you mind," said the old man at length, "do you mind if I read you some poetry?" He took up a scrapbook and put spectacles on his beak-like nose and read in a great voice:
_Two shepherds on the windy fell Sat crackin' in the peep o' day. They heard the tolling o' the bell That marked a soul had passed away._
_And white beard to old grey beard said, "Another soul has passed away." But old grey beard this answer made, "The night is flowering into day."_
_"Nay, nay," said white beard, "that's not true, Tis day that's sinking into night." "Night into day!"--and high words flew. They cursed and swore with all their might._
_They argued on that windy fell And came to blows. . . . The twilight sped. The distant tolling of the bell Told the great sun a man was dead._