Bates took the hammer
from him and shoved it on to a high shelf.

"Ye can get screws at the village, ye know," he said, still indignantly,
as if some fault had appertained to Saul.

Then, endeavouring to calm an ill-temper which he felt to be wholly
unreasonable, he crossed his arms and sat down on a chair by the wall.
His sitting in that room at all perhaps betokened something of the same
sensation which in Saul produced those glances before and behind,
indicating that he did not like to turn his back upon any object of awe.
In Bates this motive, if it existed, was probably unconscious or
short-lived; but while he still sat there Saul spoke, with a short,
silly laugh which was by way of preface.

"Don't you think, now, Mr. Bates, it 'ud be better to have a prayer, or
a hymn, or something of that sort? We'd go to bed easier."

To look at the man it would not have been easy to attribute any just
notion of the claims of religion to him. He looked as if all his
motions, except those of physical strength, were vapid and paltry.
Still, this was what he said, and Bates replied stiffly:

"I've no objections."

Then, as if assuming proper position for the ceremony that was to ease
his mind, the big lumberman sat down. The girl also sat down.

Bates, wiry, intelligent Scot that he was, sat, his arms crossed and his
broad jaw firmly set, regarding them both with contempt in his mind.
What did they either of them know about the religion they seemed at this
juncture to feel after as vaguely as animals feel after something they
want and have not? But as for him, he understood religion; he was quite
capable of being priest of his household, and he felt that its weak
demand for a form of worship at this time was legitimate. In a minute,
therefore, he got up, and fetching a large Bible from the living-room he
sat down again and turned over its leaves with great precision and
reverence.

He read one of the more trenchant of the Psalms, a long psalm that had
much in it about enemies and slaughter. It had a very strong meaning for
him, for he put himself in the place of the writer. The enemies
mentioned were, in the first place, sins--by which he denoted the more
open forms of evil; and, in the second place, wicked men who might
interfere with him; and under the head of wicked men he classed all whom
he knew to be wicked, and most other men, whom he supposed to be so. He
was not a self-righteous man--at least, not more self-righ