He closed his eyes, and a smile played over his features.

I found it very difficult to say anything in answer to this monologue; but I asked my companion whether he did not think that some clearer revelation might be made, after the bodily death, to those who for some human frailty were unable to receive it.

“An intelligent question,” said my companion, “but I am obliged to answer in the negative.  Of course the case is different for those who have accepted the truth loyally, even if their record is stained by the foulest and most detestable of crimes.  It is the moral and intellectual adhesion that matters; that once secured, conduct is comparatively unimportant, if the soul duly recurs to the medicine of penitence and contrition so mercifully provided.  I have the utmost indulgence for every form of human frailty.  I may say that I never shrank from contact with the grossest and vilest forms of continuous wrong-doing, so long as I was assured that the true doctrines were unhesitatingly and submissively accepted.  A soul which admits the supremacy of authority can go astray like a sheep that is lost, but as long as it recognises its fold and the authority of the divine law, it can be sought and found.

“The little window of which I spoke has given me indubitable testimony of this.  There was a man I knew in the flesh, who was regarded as a monster of cruelty and selfishness.  He ill-treated his wife and misused his children; his life was spent in gross debauchery, and his conduct on several occasions outstepped the sanctions of legality.  He was a forger and an embezzler.  I do not attempt to palliate his faults, and there will be a heavy reckoning to pay.  But he made his submission at the last, after a long and prostrating illness; and I have ocular demonstration of the fact that, after a mercifully brief period of suffering, he is numbered among the blest.  That is a sustaining thought.”

He then with much courtesy invited me to partake of some refreshment, which I gratefully declined.  Once or twice he rose, and opening the little cupboard door, which revealed nothing but a white wall, he drank in encouragement from some hidden sight.  He then invited me to kneel with him, and prayed fervently and with some emotion that light might be vouchsafed to souls on earth who were in darkness.  Just as he concluded, Amroth appeared with our conductor.  The latter made a courteous inquiry after my host’s health and comfort.  “I am perfectly happy here,” he said, “perfectly happy.  The attentions I receive are indeed more than I deserve; and I am specially grateful to my kind visitor, whose indulgence I must beg for my somewhat prolonged statement—­but when one has a cause much at heart,” he added with a smile, “some prolixity is easily excused.”

As we re-entered the corridor, our conductor asked me if I would care to pay any more visits.  “The case you have seen,” he said, “is an extremely typical and interesting one.”