e. It was very small--one room
below, and a sleeping-loft above; but a bed had been made up for the
sick woman by the down-stairs window looking out on the harbour; and
Naomi lay on it, with a lamp burning at her head and another at her
side, although it was not yet dark. A great dread of darkness had always
been one of Naomi's peculiarities.

She was tossing restlessly on her poor couch, while Maggie crouched on a
box at the foot. Mr. Leonard had not seen her for five years, and he
was shocked at the change in her. She was much wasted; her clear-cut,
aquiline features had been of the type which becomes indescribably
witch-like in old age, and, though Naomi Clark was barely sixty, she
looked as if she might be a hundred. Her hair streamed over the pillow
in white, uncared-for tresses, and the hands that plucked at the
bed-clothes were like wrinkled claws. Only her eyes were unchanged; they
were as blue and brilliant as ever, but now filled with such agonized
terror and appeal that Mr. Leonard's gentle heart almost stood still
with the horror of them. They were the eyes of a creature driven wild
with torture, hounded by furies, clutched by unutterable fear.

Naomi sat up and dragged at his arm.

"Can you help me? Can you help me?" she gasped imploringly. "Oh, I
thought you'd never come! I was skeered I'd die before you got here--die
and go to hell. I didn't know before today that I was dying. None of
those cowards would tell me. Can you help me?"

"If I cannot, God can," said Mr. Leonard gently. He felt himself very
helpless and inefficient before this awful terror and frenzy. He had
seen sad death-beds--troubled death-beds--ay, and despairing death-beds,
but never anything like this. "God!" Naomi's voice shrilled terribly as
she uttered the name. "I can't go to God for help. Oh, I'm skeered of
hell, but I'm skeereder still of God. I'd rather go to hell a thousand
times over than face God after the life I've lived. I tell you, I'm
sorry for living wicked--I was always sorry for it all the time. There
ain't never been a moment I wasn't sorry, though nobody would believe
it. I was driven on by fiends of hell. Oh, you don't understand--you
CAN'T understand--but I was always sorry!"

"If you repent, that is all that is necessary. God will forgive you if
you ask Him."

"No, He can't! Sins like mine can't be forgiven. He can't--and He
won't."

"He can and He will. He is a God of love, Naomi."

"No," said Naomi with s