"That's so," said James.

Doctor Gordon's face grew sober, his jocular mood for the time had
vanished. He was his true self. "Did it ever occur to you that disease
was the devil?" he asked abruptly. "That is, that all these infernal
microbes that burrow in the human system to its disease and death, were
his veritable imps at work?"

James shook his head, and looked curiously at his companion's face with
its gloomy corrugations.

"Well, it has to me," said the doctor, "and let me ask you one thing.
You have been brought up to believe that the devil's particular
residence was hell, haven't you?"

James replied in a bewildered fashion that he had.

"Well," said Doctor Gordon, "if the devil lives here, as he must live,
when there's such failures in the way of soil, and such climates, and
such fiendish diseases, and crimes, why, this is hell."

James stared at him.

Doctor Gordon nodded half-gloomily, half-whimsically. "It's so," he
said. "We call it earth; but it's hell."

James said nothing. The doctor's gloomy theology was too much for him.
Besides, he was not quite sure that the elder man was not chaffing him.

"Well," said Doctor Gordon presently, "hell it is, but there are