"Is the Chartered Company Christian also?" he asked.

"Yes, oh yes," said Peter.

"What is a Christian?" asked the stranger.

"Well, now, you really do ask such curious questions. A Christian is a man
who believes in Heaven and Hell, and God and the Bible, and in Jesus
Christ, that he'll save him from going to Hell, and if he believes he'll be
saved, he will be saved."

"But here, in this world, what is a Christian?"

"Why," said Peter, "I'm a Christian--we're all Christians."

The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the
subject. "It's curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways. She
was always saying to me, 'Don't be too anxious to make money, Peter. Too
much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.' You're very like her."

After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger, "If
you don't want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No one
comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?"

"I am not more with one people than with another," said the stranger. "The
Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman than the
Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard," said the stranger,
"the black infant cry as it crept on its mother's body and sought for her
breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man's