want botherin' thi
little yed wi' such like talk?'

'Haa long does He keep 'em i' th' hoile?' persistently asked the
boy.

'Well, if thaa mun know, He keeps 'em in for ever.'

'An' haa long's that, gronny? Is it as long as thee?'

'As long as me, lad! Whatever doesto mean?'

'I mean is forever as long as thaa'rt owd? Haa owd arto, gronny?'

'I'm sixty-five, lad.'

'Well, does He keep 'em i' the hoile sixty-five years?'

'Yi, lad. He does, forsure. But thi faither never puts thee i' th'
cellar hoile when thaa's naughty, does he?'

'Nowe. I tell thee he nobbud sez he will,'

'By Guy, lad! If ever he puts thee i' th' cellar hoile--whether
thaa'rt naughty or not--thaa mun tell me, and I'll lug his yed for
him.' And the old woman became indignant in her mien.

'But if God puts fo'k i' th' hoile, why shuldn't mi faither put me
i' th' hoile? It's reet to do as God does--isn't it, gronny?'

'Whatever wilto ax me next, lad?' cried the worn-out and perplexed
old woman. 'Come, shut up th' Bible, and eat thi pasty.'

But the little fellow's appetite was gone, and as he fell asleep
on the settle his slumber was fitful, for dark dreams disturbed
him--he had felt the first awful shadow of a dogmatic faith.

Nor was old Deborah less disturbed. Sitting by the fire, with one
eye on the child and the other on her Bible, the gloomy shadows of
a shortening day creeping around her, she, too, with her mind's
eye, saw the regions of woe--the flaming deeps where hope comes
never. What if that were her grandchild's doom!--her grandchild,
whose father she would smite if even for a moment he shut his
little son up in the cellar of his home! How her heart loathed the
passion, the cruelty, that would wreak such an act! And yet He
whom she called God had reserved blackness and darkness for ever
for the disobedient and rebellious.

Horror took hold of her, and the sweat moistened her brow. The
firelight played on the curls of the sleeping boy, and she started
as she thought of that other fire that was never quenched, and she
rose and shook her clenched hand at heaven as the possibility of
the singeing of a single hair of the child passed through her
mind.

For a time Deborah stood alone, without a God, the faith in which
she had been trained, and in which she had sheltered in righteous
security, shrinking into space until she found herself in the void
of a darkness more terrible than that of the pit which she had
been speaking of