[Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner]@TWC D-Link bookMoonfleet CHAPTER 12 15/28
For I have spent half my life in graveyard or church, and 'twould be as foolish to move about such places and have no words to meet an evil visitor withal, as to bear money on a lonely road without a pistol.
So one day, after Parson Glennie had preached from Habakkuk, how that "the vision is for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry", I talked with him on these matters, and got from him three or four rousing texts such as spectres fear more than a burned child does the fire.
I will learn them all to thee some day, but for the moment take this Latin which I got by heart: "_Abite a me in ignem etemum qui paratus est diabolo at angelis ejus."_ Englished it means: "Depart from me into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels," but hath at least double that power in Latin.
So get that after me by heart, and use it freely if thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right numbers to them.
For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to four-score years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it away and we are gone", and he writes Psalm 90,21.
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