“Never.  I do not think that genuine conversions come in that way.  A sense of righteousness can not prepare a man for salvation—­only a sense of sin—­a believing that all our righteousness is filthy rags.  Still, I wouldn’t discourage you from studying the Bible in any way.  You will come round right after a while, and then you will find that to be saved, a man must abhor every so-called good thing that he ever did.”

“Yes,” said Charlton, who had grown more modest in his trials, “I am sure there is some truth in the old doctrine as you state it.  But is not a man better and more open to divine grace, for resisting a temptation to vice?”

Mr. Lurton hesitated.  He remembered that he had read, in very sound writers, arguments to prove that there could be no such thing as good works before conversion, and Mr. Lurton was too humble to set his judgment against the great doctors’.  Besides, he was not sure that Albert’s questions might not force him into that dangerous heresy attributed to Arminius, that good works may be the impulsive cause by which God is moved to give His grace to the unconverted.

“Do you think that a man can really do good without God’s help?” asked Mr. Lurton.

“I don’t think man ever tries to do right in humility and sincerity without some help from God,” answered Albert, whose mode of thinking about God was fast changing for the better.  “I think God goes out a long, long way to meet the first motions of a good purpose in a man’s heart.  The parable of the Prodigal Son only half-tells it.  The parable breaks down with a truth too great for human analogies.  I don’t know but that He acts in the beginning of the purpose.  I am getting to be a Calvinist—­in fact, on some points, I out-Calvin Calvin.  Is not God’s help in the good purposes of every man?”

Mr. Lurton shook his head with a gentle gravity, and changed the subject by saying, “I am going to Metropolisville next week to attend a meeting.  Can I do anything for you?”

“Go and see my mother,” said Charlton, with emotion.  “She is sick, and will never get well, I fear.  Tell her I am cheerful.  And—­Mr. Lurton—­do you pray with her.  I do not believe anything, except by fits and starts; but one of your prayers would do my mother good.  If she could be half as peaceful as you are, I should be happy.”

Lurton walked away down the gallery from Albert’s cell, and descended the steps that led to the dining-room, and was let out of the locked and barred door into the vestibule, and out of that into the yard, and thence out through other locks into the free air of out-doors.  Then he took a long breath, for the sight of prison doors and locks and bars and grates and gates and guards oppressed even his peaceful soul.  And walking along the sandy road that led by the margin of Lake St. Croix toward the town, he recalled Charlton’s last remark.  And as he meditatively tossed out of the path with his boot the pieces of pine-bark