ld have been all killed; and if I had simply said nothin' to
their questions, they would have sent out to scour the country, and have
found out the camp for sartin, so that the only way to escape was by
tellin' them a heap o' downright lies."

Charley looked very much perplexed at this.

"You have indeed placed me in a difficulty. I know not what I would
have done. I don't know even what I _ought to do_ under these
circumstances. Difficulties may perplex me, and the force of
circumstances might tempt me to do what I believed to be wrong. I am a
sinner, Jacques, like other mortals, I know; but one thing I am quite
sure of--namely, that when men speak it should _always_ be truth and
_never_ falsehood."

Jacques looked perplexed too. He was strongly impressed with the
necessity of telling falsehood in the circumstances in which he had been
placed, as just related, while at the same time he felt deeply the
grandeur and the power of Charley's last remark.

"I should have been under the sod _now_," said he, "if I had not told a
lie _then_. Is it better to die than to speak falsehood?"

"Some men have thought so," replied Charley. "I acknowledge the
difficulty of _your_ case, and of all similar cases. I don't know what
should be done; but I have read of a minister of the gospel whose people
were very wicked and would not attend to his instructions, although they
could not but respect himself, he was so consistent and Christianlike in
his conduct. Persecution arose in the country where he lived, and men
and women were cruelly murdered because of their religious belief. For
a long time he was left unmolested; but one day a band of soldiers came
to his house, and asked him whether he was a Papist or a Protestant
(Papist, Jacques, being a man who has sold his liberty in religious
matters to the Pope, and a Protestant being one who protests against
such an ineffably silly and unmanly state of slavery). Well, his people
urged the good old man to say he was a Papist, telling him that he would
then be spared to live among them, and preach the true faith for many
years perhaps. Now, if there was one thing that this old man would have
toiled for and _died_ for, it was that his people should become true
Christians--and he told them so; `but,' he added, `I will not tell a lie
to accomplish that end, my children--no, not even to save my life.' So
he told the soldiers that he was a Protestant, and immediately they
carried