The past months of his wife's suffering had bowed him as with the weight of years.

Even Hughie could note this.
After supper the old man "took the Books" as usual, but when, as High Priest, he "ascended the Mount of Ordinances to offer the evening sacrifice," he was as a man walking in thick darkness bewildered and afraid.

The prayer was largely a meditation on the heinousness of sin and the righteous judgments of God, and closed with an exaltation of the Cross, with an appeal that the innocent might be spared the punishment of the guilty.

The conviction had settled in the old man's mind that "the Lord was visiting upon him and his family his sins, his pride, his censoriousness, his hardness of heart." The words of his prayer fell meaningless upon Hughie's English ears, but the boy's heart quivered in response to the agony of entreaty in the pleading tones, and he rose from his knees awed and subdued.
There was no word spoken for some moments after the prayer.

With people like the Finches it was considered to be an insult to the Almighty to depart from "the Presence" with any unseemly haste.