f,--"listen to me! How can you
say such things about her? A saint and angel, if ever there was one. The
Lord don't send no one to hell, let alone such as her. An' any way, I'd
rather go to the bad place with her than stay with all the golden harps
and crowns in the best sort of a heaven with them as would keep her out,
so I would!"

Here Alfaretta broke down, and began to cry. Thaddeus could not stand
that; he edged up to her, murmuring, "I wouldn't cry, Retta,--I wouldn't
cry."

But she only gave the shoulder he touched a vicious shake, and cried
harder than ever, saying, "No--I--I bet you wouldn't--you'd never--care."

But Alfaretta's defense changed Mr. Dean's anger at the snub he received
from the preacher's wife into real alarm for his child's spiritual
welfare. A daughter of his to say the Lord did not send souls to hell!

"Alfaretta," he said, with solemn slowness, "you'd better get your bunnet
and go home. I'll see Mr. Ward about this; his wife's done harm enough.
You've got to leave her,--I mean it. I won't see her send my child to
hell before my very eyes."

"Oh, pa," Alfaretta entreated, choking and sobbing, and brushing her
tears away with the back of her hand, "don't,--don't say nothin' to Mr.
Ward, nor take me away. 'Twasn't her made me say those things; it was
just my own self. Don't take me away."

"Did she ever say anything to you about the Lord not sendin' people to
hell?" asked her father.

"Oh," said Alfaretta, growing more and more frightened, "'tain't what she
talks about; it's her bein' so good, an'"--

"Did she ever," interrupted the elder, with slow emphasis, standing over
her, and shaking his stubby forefinger at her,--"did she ever say the
Lord didn't send Tom Davis to hell, to you?"

Alfaretta cowered in her chair, and Thaddeus began to whimper for
sympathy. "I don't know," she answered desperately,--"I don't know
anything, except she's good."

"Listen to me," said Mr. Dean, in his harsh, monotonous voice: "did Mrs.
Ward ever say anything to you about hell, or the Lord's not sendin'
people there? Answer me that."

Then the loving little servant-maid, truthful as the blood of Scotch
ancestors and a Presbyterian training could make her, faced what she knew
would bring remorse, and, for all she could tell, unpardonable sin upon
her soul, and said boldly, "No, she never did. She never said one single
blessed word to me about hell."

The wind seemed suddenly to leave the elder's sai