the mellow sunset. The street opened toward the west. The red half-sunken
sun shed a solemn splendour on the everyday houses, and crimsoned the
windows of Dempster's projecting upper storey.

Suddenly a loud murmur arose and spread along the stream of church-goers,
and one group after another paused and looked backward. At the far end of
the street, men, accompanied by a miscellaneous group of onlookers, were
slowly carrying something--a body stretched on a door. Slowly they passed
along the middle of the street, lined all the way with awe-struck faces,
till they turned aside and paused in the red sunlight before Dempster's
door.

It was Dempster's body. No one knew whether he was alive or dead.

Chapter 22

It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that 'there is more joy
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just
persons that need no repentance.' And certain ingenious philosophers of
our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of
correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has been
taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of another--that
has 'learned pity through suffering'--is likely to find very imperfect
satisfaction in the 'balance of happiness,' 'doctrine of compensations,'
and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough complacency in the
presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying will not be altogether
dark. The emotions, I have observed, are but slightly influenced by
arithmetical considerations: the mother, when her sweet lisping little
ones have all been taken from her one after another, and she is hanging
over her last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact that the
tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a necessary average, and that a
thousand other babes brought into the world at the same time are doing
well, and are likely to live; and if you stood beside that mother--if you
knew her pang and shared it--it is probable you would be equally unable
to see a ground of complacency in statistics.

Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is highly rational; but
emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational: it insists on caring for
individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view of
human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a set-off
against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side
of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of fee