implied a mean beggar? I don't say my father was a hypocrite
when he made you a colporteur, and so one of them; but"--

He paused. Even in this frothy-brained fellow, his religion or his doubt
lay deeper than all. His face grew dark.

"I tell you, if there is one thing I loathe, it is the God and His day
that were taught to me when I was a child: joyless, hard, cruel.
Fire--humph!--and brimstone for all but a few hundred. I remember. Well,
I don't know yet if there is any better," with a vague look. "A man
shifts for himself in the next chance as well as now, I suppose. Did you
believe what you preached, Stephen?" with an abrupt change. "God! how
you used to writhe under it at first!"

"They forced me into it," said Yarrow. "I was only a boy. You remember
that I was only a boy,--just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man
was in our church-pulpit then, the better. _I_ knew nothing, John,"
appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was
in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different
God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only
get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when
you came to me to help you with your plan, I wanted to get out, and"--

"You did help me,"--chafing the limp fingers. "That was my first start,
that Pesson note. I owe that to you, Stephen."

"I have paid for it," looking him steadily in the eye, some unexpected
manliness rising up, making his tone bitter and marrowy. "I paid for it.
But no matter for that. But now you come again. I have had time to think
over these things in yonder, John."

Soule dropped his hand, drew back, and was silent a moment.

"Let it be so. But did you think what you would do, if you refused your
aid to me? Have you found work? or a God to preach?"

Something in these last words took Yarrow's sudden strength away. He did
not answer for a moment.

"Work?" feebly. "No,--I haven't heard of any work. As for a God"--

"Well, then, what are your purposes?" coldly.

Another silence.

"I don't know. I never was worth much," he gasped out at last, stooping,
and pulling at his shoestrings.

"And now"--said Soule.

"There's no need for you to say that!" with a sharp cry. "I don't forget
that I have slipped,--that it's too late,--I don't forget."

His hands jerked at his coat-fronts in a wild, dazed way.

"Stephen!"

The woman rose, and let in the air.

"I tha