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-righteous than most men, for he read with as great fervour the adjurations against sins into which he might fall as against those which seemed to him pointed more especially at other sinners who might persecute him for his innocence.