“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 lies.”

“And as the fool dies, so dies the wise man; and there is one account to the righteous and to the wicked.  And a man has no pre-eminence over a beast, for both turn alike to dust; and Solomon does not know, he says, or any one else, anything about the whole matter, or even whether there be any life after death at all; and so, he says, the only wise thing is to leave such deep questions alone, for Him who made us to settle in His own way, and just to fear God and keep His commandments, and do the work which lies nearest us with all our might.”

Grace was silent.

“You are surprised to hear me quote Scripture, and well you may be:  but that same book of Ecclesiastes is a very old favourite with me; for I am no Christian, but a worlding, if ever there was one.  But it does puzzle me why you, who are a Christian, should talk one half-hour as you have been talking to that poor girl, and the next go for information about the next life to poor old disappointed, broken-hearted Solomon, with his three hundred and odd idolatrous wives, who confesses fairly that this life is a failure, and that he does not know whether there is any next life at all.”