Murray was silent a minute—a long minute. Then he said:
“Give it to me. Now, you just come along home, young ’un. And please to understand that the power of evil isn’t the greatest power in the world. You’re proof positive to the contrary, if you only knew it.”
“But—if Pipi curses you still—if he gets something else?” whispered Roddy out in the starlight, where the tussocks of Fighting Hill muttered round their feet.
Murray tucked the boy’s cold hand close to the warmth of his own body and trudged forward.
“Roddy,” he said, “we’re all of us ready to remember that there is a Devil. Sometimes we are so busy remembering it that we forget that there is a God. If we inverted our beliefs occasionally we’d get along better. I don’t understand this, and I never shall, I think. It’s sweated a good deal of nerve out of me. But I’ve stuck my toes up against something at last, and I’m not going out on the undertow any more.”
“W-what is it?” whispered Roddy.
“You young ass!” said Murray, looking away to the stars. “Haven’t I just told you?”
