Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/471

Rh passions which chased him in the shape of O'Hara, and fear lest that hound should catch him lying down kept him on his feet. He threw away his coat, his mitts, everything which meant weight. He did not realise cold or weariness any longer, and yet he would have fallen down and died a hundred times but for the dogging thing behind him.

It chased him on, reeling and stumbling and muttering; more afraid of that hound generated by his own sins than he had ever been afraid of his life. Whether the days passed or only hours he could not tell. Once he heard his voice calling again, sharpened by 'the stress of ultimate need.

"Lord have mercy upon us," it said. "Christ have mercy upon us." They were the old prayers of his boyhood, sounding again from lips and heart long unfamiliar with them. How his small bare knees used to ache on the hard church cushions, and how the bees used to hum in the lilacs beyond the window

"Lord have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us"

And then O'Hara came very close to his shoulder, and the nameless dread chased him over a little hill and into a fir coppice where a fire blazed, searing his aching eyes. Then a dog sprang out, and he snatched at it, and fell over it, and lay still.