“Don’t you think I’d better send Clytie, now?”

“No; please wait a minute.”  He clutched her hand with a new strength, and raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower: 

“Nance, you know I’ve had a feeling it wasn’t the right thing to ask the old gentleman this—­he might think I hadn’t been studying at college—­but you tell me—­what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ?  It was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind.”

“Bernal—­you surely know!”

“Truly I don’t—­it seems a bad dream I’ve had some time—­that’s all—­some awful dream about my father.”

“It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on Calvary.”

“Our redemption from what?”

“From sin, to be sure.”

“What sin?”

“Why, our sin, of course—­the sin of Adam which comes down to us.”

“You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?”

“Yes.”

“From whom did he purchase it?”

“Oh, dear—­this is like a catechism—­from God, of course.”

“The God that made Adam?”

“Certainly.”

“Oh, yes—­now I seem to remember him—­he was supposed to make people, and then curse them, wasn’t he?  And so he had to have his son killed before he could forgive Adam for our sins?”

“No; before he could forgive us for Adam’s sin, which descended to us.”

“Came down like an entail, eh? ...  Adam couldn’t disinherit us?  Well, how did this God have his son die?”

“Why, Bernal—­you must remember, dear—­you knew so well—­don’t you know he was crucified?”

“To be sure I do—­how stupid!  And was God very cheerful after that?  No more trouble about Adam or anything?”

“You must hush—­I can’t tell you about these things—­wait till your grandfather comes.”

“No, I want to have it from you, Nance—­grandad would think I’d been slighting the classics.”

“Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe.”

“Believe what?”

“Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son.”

“What does he do with those who don’t believe it?”

“They—­they—­Oh, I don’t know—­really, Bernal, I must go now.”

“Just a minute, Nance!” He clutched more tightly the hand he had been holding.  “I see now!  I must be remembering something I knew—­something that brought me down sick.  If a man doesn’t believe God was capable of becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son would appease his anger toward us, he sends that man where—­where the worm doeth something or other—­what is it?  Oh, well!—­of course, it’s of no importance—­only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if grandad should ask me about it.  What a quaint belief it must have been.”

“Oh, I must go!—­let me, now.”