lent. Probably his logical faculty told him that his own
thinking, and coming to a conclusion without knowing, was as foolish in
himself as in his comrades.

The subject of conversation happened to be very congenial to Cheenbuk's
cast of mind. He remained thinking and gazing upwards for a minute or
two, then he said meditatively, as if he were trying to work out some
mental problem--

"Did you ever make a sledge, or a spear, and then destroy it utterly
while it was yet good and new?"

"Never. I have been bad, it may be, but I am not a fool."

"Is the great Maker of all a fool? He has made _you_, and if He lets
you die now, utterly, He destroys you in your best days. Is it not more
likely that He is calling you to some other land where there is work for
you to do?"

"I don't understand. I do not know," replied Gartok, somewhat doggedly.

"But you do understand, and you do know, that He would be foolish to
kill you now, _unless_ He had some work and some pleasure for you in the
unknown land from which no sound ever comes back. When a father gives
his son a work to do, he does not destroy his son when the work is done.
He gives him another piece of work; perhaps sends him on a long journey
to another place. When the Maker of all sees that we have finished our
work here, I ask again, is it not likely that He will send us to work
elsewhere, or is it more likely that He will utterly destroy us--and so
prove Himself to be more foolish than we are?"

"I do not know," repeated Gartok, "but I do know that if the Maker of
all is good, as I have heard say, then I have not done _His_ work here--
for you know, everybody knows, I have been bad!"

Cheenbuk was much perplexed, for he knew not "how to minister to a mind
diseased."

"I have often wondered," he said at last, "why it is that some things
are wrong and some right. The Maker of all, being good and
all-powerful, could have made things as He pleased--all right, nothing
wrong. Perhaps men, like children, will understand things better when
they are older--when they have reached the land from which no sound
comes back. But I am not much troubled. The Maker of all must be
all-good and all-wise. If He were not, He could not be the Maker of
all. I can _trust_ Him. He will throw light into our minds when the
time comes. He has already thrown some light, for do we not know right
from wrong?"

"True, but although I have known right I have always done wrong,"