and understand. Moreover, that her degradation would become
theirs. And then it came--the horror that had convinced her the only
way out was to kill them and afterward herself. Now, what was to be
done? She was not insane. She was just a sinner who felt obliged to
be damned!

God had at least a dozen ways of inspiring William, and not all of them
orthodox. Instead of harrowing this woman with a prayer he took on a
competent executive air.

"You are to do nothing," he told her, "and be sure you do not confess
your sin to anyone else. Leave everything to me. We will see about
the forgiveness later; now you are to rest and not think till I get the
way clear for your feet." He went out, told the attendants that Mrs.
Martin was not insane, but had suffered a shock and would now be all
right. They thought he had achieved a miracle when they had returned
to the room and found her weeping like any other sane woman.

Before daylight he had escorted the manager of the quarry to the
nearest railway station with instructions never to return, so
emphatically given that he never did. He prayed earnestly for the
unfortunate woman himself, but he forbade her to pray for herself until
long afterward, when she had resumed existence upon the simple basis of
being the innocent mother of her innocent children.

"If she begins to agonize in prayer," he explained to me, "she will go
mad again. So soon as she recovers from the insanity of evil she may
pray, but not now."

CHAPTER XV

SKELETONS IN WILLIAM'S DOCTRINAL CLOSET

I have often wondered what a writer of fiction would have made out of
such a story. As a matter of fact, the woman is living to-day, highly
respected, serenely proud of her two grown daughters; and I believe
William simply covered up her sin so deep with his wisdom that she has
forgotten it. His Methodist doctrinal closet has more than one
skeleton like this in it.

"Repentance is not remorse," he used to argue upon rare occasions when
I dragged them out. "Mrs. Martin could not make the proper
distinction. God understood."

I have no doubt his conference would have fired him for fathering very
curious heresies, if all his doings with sinners had been published.
There was the apostate, for example, whom he tried to save at the
expense of one of the doctrines of his church. Just as Baptists
believe in "election" and Presbyterians in predestination, the
Methodists believe in apostasy--that is