an' I feels more hopeful like 'bout the future."
Self-righteousness in a new-fledged Luke Gospeler, who had been of the fold but three months and whose previous record was extremely unsatisfactory, irritated Gray Michael not a little.
"Bwoy!" he said loudly, "doan't 'e be deceived that way. 'Gird 'e wi' sackcloth, lament and howl; for the fierce anger o' the Lard is not turned back from us.' Three months o' righteousness is a purty bad set off 'gainst twenty years o' sin, an' it doan't become 'e to feel hopeful, I 'sure ye."
The sick man's color paled, and a certain note as of triumph in his voice died out of it. His mother had left them, feeling that her presence might hinder conversation and lessen the comfort which Mr. Tregenza had brought.
"I did ought to be chap-fall'n, I s'pose."
"Iss, you did, my son, nobody more'n you. Maybe you'll live; maybe you'll die; but keep humble. I doan't wish to deceive 'e. Us ain't had time to make no certainty 'bout things. You'm in the Lard's hand, an' it becomes 'e to sing small, an' remember what your life's bin."
The other grew uneasy and his voice faltered while he still fought for a happy eternity.
"I'd felt like 'twas all right arter what mother read."
"Not so. God's a just God 'fore everything. Theer ed'n no favorin' wi' Him. I hopes you'll live this many a day, Vallack; an' then, when your hour comes, you'll have piled up a tidy record an' can go wi' a certainty faacin' you. Seems you'm better, an' us at chapel's prayed hot an' strong to the Throne that you might be left to work out your salvation now your foot's 'pon the right road."
"But if I dies, mister?"
"'The prayer of the righteous man availeth much,'" answered Gray Michael evasively. "I be come," he added, "to read the Scriptures to 'e."
"You all prayed for me, sir?"
"Iss, every man, but theer was no mincin' matters, Albert. Us was arskin' for a miserable sinner, a lost sheep awnly just strayed back, an' we put it plain as that was so."
"'Tweer mighty kind o' the Luke Gosp'lers, sir."
"'Twas their dooty. Now I be gwaine to read the Book."
"I feels that uneasy now," whined the sufferer, in a voice where fear spoke instead of hope, "but I s'pose 'tis a sign o' graace I should be?"
"Iss, 'tis. I've comed to tell 'e the truth, for 'tis ill as a man should be blind to facts on what may be his last bed 'bove the airth. Listen to this, my son, an' if theer's anything you doan't onderstand, arsk me an' I'll thraw light 'pon it."
He read, with loud, slow voice, the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, and that glorious clarion of great promise gave Michael the lie and drowned his own religious opinions as thunder drowns the croaking of marsh frogs; but he knew it not. The brighter burned his own shining light, the blacker the shadows it threw upon the future of all sinners.
As Tregenza finished and put down his Bible, the other spoke and quoted eagerly:
"'Incline your ear an' come unto Me; fear, an' your sawl shall live!' Theer do seem a hope in that if it ed'n awver-bold me thinkin' so?" he asked.
"That's like them Church o' Englanders, a tearin' wan text away from t'others an' readin' it accordin' as they pleases. I'll expound it all to wance, as a God-fearin' man did ought to treat the Scriptures."
Gray Michael's exposition illustrated nothing beyond his own narrow intellectual limitations. His cold cloud of words obscured the prophet's sunshine, and the light went out of the dying man's eyes, leaving only alarm. He trembled on the brink of the horrid truth; he heard it thinly veiled in the other's stern utterance, saw it looking from his hard blue eyes. After the sermon, silence followed, broken by Vallack, who coughed once and again, then raised himself and braced his heart to the tremendous question that demanded answering.
"I wants your awn feelin' like, mister. I must have it. I caan't sleep no more wi'out knawin' the best or worst. You be the justest man ever I seed or heard tell on out the Scriptures. An' I wants 'e to gimme your opinion like. S'pose you was the Judge an' I comed afore 'e an' the Books was theer and you'd read 'em an' had to conclude 'pon 'em—?"
The fisherman reflected. Vallack's proposition did not strike him as particularly grotesque. He felt it was a natural question, and he only regretted that it had been put, because, though he had driven more than one young man to righteousness along the path of terror, in this present case the truth came too late save to add another horror to death. He believed in all sincerity that as surely as the young man before him presently died, so surely would he be damned, but he saw no particular object in stating the fact. Such intelligence might tell upon Vallack's physical condition—a thing of all others to be avoided, for Gray Michael held that the sufferer's only chance of a happy eternity was increased and lengthened opportunity in time.
"It ed'n for me to sit in the Judgment Seat, Albert. 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lard.' You must allus hold in mind that theer's mighty few saved alive, best o' times. Many be called, but few chosen. Men go down to the graave every second o' the day an' night, but if you could see the sawls a streamin' away, thicker'n a cloud of starlings, you'd find a mass, black as a storm, went down long, an' awnly just a summer cloud like o' the blessed riz up. Hell's bigger'n Heaven; an' er's need to be, for Heaven's like to be a lonely plaace, when all's said. I won't speak no more 'bout that subjec'. 'Tis good fashion weather for 'e just now, an us'll hope as you ban't gwaine to die for many a day."
"Say it out, mister, say it out. I knaws what you means. You reckons if I gaws I'm lost."
"My poor sawl, justice is justice; an' the Lard's all for justice an' no less. Theer's no favorin' wi' Him, Albert."
"But mightn't He favor the whole bilin' of us—good'n bad—cause He made us?"
"Surely not. Wheer's the justice o' that? If He done that, how'd the godly get their fair dues—eh? Be the righteous man to share God's Heaven wi' publicans an' sinners? That ed'n justice anyhow. Don't fret, lad; tears won't mend bad years. Bide quiet an' listen to me whiles I pray for 'e."
The man in the bed had grown very white, his eyes burned wildly out of a shrunken face, and he gripped the sheets and shivered in pure physical terror.
"I caan't die, I caan't die, not yet," he groaned, "pray to the Lard to keep me from dyin' yet a while, mister. Arsk en to give me just a lil time, 'cause I'm that sorry for my scarlet sins."
Thereupon Michael knelt, clasped his hands so close that the bent finger-joints grew white, raised his massive head upward and prayed with his eyes closed. The intercession for life ended, he rose up, shook Vallack by the hand, and so departed.
"Allus, when you've got the chance, bear the balm o' Gilead to a sinner's couch," he said to his daughter as they walked home. "'Tis the duty of man an' maid to spread the truth an' bring peace to the troubled, an' strength to the weak-hearted, an' rise up them that fall."
A week later Mr. Tregenza heard how Albert Vallack had burst a blood-vessel and died, fighting horribly with awful invisible terrors.
"Another sawl gone down into the Pit," he said. "I reckon fewer an' fewer be chosen every year as the world do grow older an' riper for the last fires."
CHAPTER SIX
