in the
meanwhile."

"Enough to save many lives--lives?--immortal souls, too! Oh, what
could I do?"

"A great deal, Miss Harvey," said Tom, across whom the recollection of
Grace's influence flashed for the first time. What a help she might be
to him!

And he talked on and on to her, and found that she entered into his
plans with all her wild enthusiasm, but also with sound practical
common sense; and Tom began to respect her intellect as well as her
heart.

At last, however, she faltered--

"Oh, if I could but believe all this! Is it not fighting against God?"

"I do not know what sort of God yours is, Miss Harvey. I believe in
some One who made all that!" and he pointed round him to the glorious
woods and glorious sky; "I should have fancied from your speech to
that poor girl, that you believed in Him also. You may, however, only
believe in the same being in whom the Methodist parson believes, one
who intends to hurl into endless agony every human being who has not
had a chance of hearing the said preacher's nostrum for delivering men
out of the hands of Him who made them!"

"What do you mean?" asked Grace, startled alike by Tom's words, and
the intense scorn and bitterness of his tone.

"That matters little. What do you mean in turn? What did you mean by
saying, that saving lives is saving immortal souls?"

"Oh, is it not giving them time to repent? What will become of them,
if they are cut off in the midst of their sins?"

"If you had a son whom it was not convenient to you to keep at home,
would his being a bad fellow--the greatest scoundrel on the earth--be
a reason for your turning him into the streets to live by thieving,
and end by going to the dogs for ever and a day?"

"No; but what do you mean?"

"That I do not think that God, when He sends a human being out of this
world, is more cruel than you or I would be. If we transport a man
because he is too bad to be in England, and he shows any signs of
mending, we give him a fresh chance in the colonies, and let him start
again, to try if he cannot do better next time. And do you fancy that
God, when He transports a man out of this world, never gives him a
fresh chance in another--especially when nine out of ten poor rascals
have never had a fair chance yet?"

Grace looked up in his face astonished.

"Oh, if I could but believe that! Oh! it would give me some gleam of
hope for my two!--But no--it's not in Scripture. Where the tree falls
there it