the people were not educated.  Official Christendom in every country still preached the everlasting torture of the majority of the human race as a well thought out part of the Creator’s scheme.  No leader had been bold enough to come forward and denounce it as an insult to his God.  As one grew older, kindly mother Nature, ever seeking to ease the self-inflicted burdens of her foolish brood, gave one forgetfulness, insensibility.  The condemned criminal puts the thought of the gallows away from him as long as may be:  eats, and sleeps and even jokes.  Man’s soul grows pachydermoid.  But the children!  Their sensitive brains exposed to every cruel breath.  No philosophic doubt permitted to them.  No learned disputation on the relationship between the literal and the allegorical for the easing of their frenzied fears.  How many million tiny white-faced figures scattered over Christian Europe and America, stared out each night into a vision of black horror; how many million tiny hands clutched wildly at the bedclothes.  The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, if they had done their duty, would have prosecuted before now the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Of course she would go to Hell.  As a special kindness some generous relative had, on Joan’s seventh birthday, given her an edition of Dante’s “Inferno,” with illustrations by Dore.  From it she was able to form some notion of what her eternity was likely to be.  And God all the while up in His Heaven, surrounded by that glorious band of praise-trumpeting angels, watching her out of the corner of His eye.  Her courage saved her from despair.  Defiance came to her aid.  Let Him send her to Hell!  She was not going to pray to Him and make up to Him.  He was a wicked God.  Yes, He was:  a cruel, wicked God.  And one night she told Him so to His face.

It had been a pretty crowded day, even for so busy a sinner as little Joan.  It was springtime, and they had gone into the country for her mother’s health.  Maybe it was the season:  a stirring of the human sap, conducing to that feeling of being “too big for one’s boots,” as the saying is.  A dangerous period of the year.  Indeed, on the principle that prevention is better than cure, Mrs. Munday had made it a custom during April and May to administer to Joan a cooling mixture; but on this occasion had unfortunately come away without it.  Joan, dressed for use rather than show, and without either shoes or stockings, had stolen stealthily downstairs:  something seemed to be calling to her.  Silently—­“like a thief in the night,” to adopt Mrs. Munday’s metaphor—­had slipped the heavy bolts; had joined the thousand creatures of the wood—­had danced and leapt and shouted; had behaved, in short, more as if she had been a Pagan nymph than a happy English child.  She had regained the house unnoticed, as she thought, the Devil, no doubt, assisting her; and had hidden her wet clothes in the bottom of a mighty