"And sometimes I have to fill my mouth with the hundred and twenty-first psalm to keep from answering improper, and after all, Bridget will only ask if I don't know the tune to that owld penny ballad. 'Tis true enough about the tune" (Boyd confessed), "me having no pitch-pipe, but Bridget has no business to miscall scripture, whether said or sung! "As to Dick Wilkes, that got his lame leg at the attack on--well, we need not go opening up old scores, but we all know where--has been staying with us, and that maybe made Bridget worse. Aye, that he has. There's no one like Bridget for drawing all the riff-raff of the countryside about her--I know some will say that comes of marrying me. But 'tis the ould gennleman's own falsehood. You'll always find Boyd Connoway in the company of his betters whenever so be he can! "But Dick Wilkes had our 'ben' room, and there were a little, light, active man that came to see him--not that I know much of him, save from the sound of voices and my wife Bridget on the watch to keep me in the kitchen, and all that. "But Old Israel would never give up Dick Wilkes. He kept coming and coming to our house, and what he called 'wrestling for Dick's soul.' Sometimes he went away pleased, thinking he had gotten the upper hand. Then the little light man would come again, and there was Dick just as bad as ever. 'Backsliding' was what Israel called it, and a good name, I say, for then the job was all to do over again from the beginning. But it was the Adversary that carried off Dick Wilkes at the long and last." "Ah!" came a subdued groan from all the kitchen. Boyd gloomily nodded his head. "Yes," he said, "'tis a great and terrible warning to Bridget, and so I tell her. 'Twas the night of the big meeting at the Tabernacle, when Israel kept it up for six hours, one lot coming and another going--the Isle o' Man fleet being in--that was the night of all nights in the year that Dick Wilkes must choose for to die in. Aught more contrary than that man can't be thought of. "It happened just so, as I say. About four o'clock we were all of us shut up in the kitchen, and by that we knew (Jerry and I, at least) that Dick Wilkes had company--also that so far as repentance went, old Israel's goose was cooked till he had another turn at his man. And then after six we heard him shouting that he was going to die--which seemed strange to us. For we could hear him tearing at his sea-chest and stamping about his room, which is not what is expected of a dying man.