st, in a voice so
hoarse, so horribly constrained, that it seemed almost to rend him as it
forced utterance--"sir, surely I am mistaken in what I understand; it is
little I ask you, and surely not unjust. Yesterday this man was a vile,
debauched drunkard; surely that does not make him fitter for heaven!
Yesterday I was a God-fearing, law-abiding man, surely that does not
make me unfit! I am not unfit, am I?"

"You are not yet fit for heaven," answered the man, with impassive
calmness. And again, for the third time, the crowd roared with evil
laughter.

Within Colonel Singelsby's soul that fiery flood was now lashing
dreadfully close to the summit of its barriers. His face was as livid as
death, and his hands were clinched till the nails cut into his palm.
"Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot
understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is
it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty
years has led a life of besotted sin and indulgence, and because I for
sixty years have feared God and loved my neighbor, that he is to be
chosen and I am to be left?"

The man did not reply in words, but in the steady look of his unwinking
eyes the other read his answer.

"Then," gasped Colonel Singelsby, and as he spoke he shook his clinched
and trembling fist against the still, blue sky overhead--"then, if that
be God's justice, may it be damned, for I want none of it."

Then came the end, swiftly, completely. For the fourth time the crowd
laughed, and at the sound those floodgates so laboriously built up
during a lifetime of abstinence were suddenly burst asunder and fell
crashing, and a burning flood of hell's own rage and madness rushed
roaring and thundering into his depicted, empty soul, flaming, blazing,
consuming like straws every precept of righteousness, every fear of God,
and Colonel Edward Singelsby, the one-time Christian gentleman, the
one-time upright son of grace, the one-time man of law and God, was
transformed instantly and terribly into--what? Was it a livid devil from
hell? He cursed the jeering crowd, and at the sound of his own curses a
blindness fell upon him, and he neither knew what he said nor what he
did. His good old friend, who had accompanied him so far and until now
had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some
thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume
them all, he elbowed himself ou