an irresistible argument against the existence of
a God.

In her countenance Polwarth read at once that he had blundered, and a
sad, noble, humble smile irradiated his. It had its effect on Juliet.
She would be generous and forgive his presumption: she knew dwarfs were
always conceited--that wise Nature had provided them with high thoughts
wherewith to add the missing cubit to their stature. What repulsive
things Christianity taught! Her very flesh recoiled from the poor ape!

"I trust you are satisfied, ma'am," the kobold added, after a moment's
vain expectation of a word from Juliet, "that your secret is safe with
me."

"I am," answered Juliet, with a condescending motion of her stately
neck, saying to herself in feeling if not in conscious thought,--"After
all he is hardly human! I may accept his devotion as I would that of a
dog!"

The moment she had thus far yielded, she began to long to speak of her
husband. Perhaps he can tell her something of him! At least he could
talk about him. She would have been eager to look on his reflection, had
it been possible, in the mind of a dog that loved him. She would turn
the conversation in a direction that might find him.

"But I do not see," she went on, "how you, Mr. Polwarth--I think that is
your name--how you can, consistently with your principles,--"

"Excuse me, ma'am: I can not even, by silence, seem to admit that you
know any thing whatever of my principles."

"Oh!" she returned, with a smile of generous confession, "I was brought
up to believe as you do."

"That but satisfies me that for the present you are incapable of knowing
any thing of my principles."

"I do not wonder at your thinking so," she returned, with the
condescension of superior education, as she supposed, and yet with the
first motion of an unconscious respect for the odd little monster.--He,
with wheezing chest, went on throwing up the deep, damp, fresh earth, to
him smelling of marvelous things. Ruth would have ached all over to see
him working so hard!--"Still," Juliet went on, "supposing your judgment
of me correct, that only makes it the stranger you should imagine that
in serving such a one, you are pleasing Him you call your Master. He
says whosoever denies Him before men He will deny before the angels of
God."

"What my Lord says He will do, He will do, as He meant it when He said
it: what He tells me to do, I try to understand and do. Now He has told
me of all things not to say t