new hero--feeling that each was perfect in his own way.




CHAPTER VIII

SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES


Around the evening lamp that winter the little boys studied Holy Writ,
while Allan made summaries of it for the edification of the proud
grandfather in far-off Florida.

Tersely was the creation and the fall of man set forth, under promptings
and suggestions from Clytie and Cousin Bill J., who was no mean Bible
authority: how God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," found
his first pair ashamed of their nakedness, and with his own hands made
them coats of skins and clothed them. "What a treasure those garments
would be in this evil day," said Clytie--"what a silencing rebuke to all
heretics!" But the Lord drove out the wicked pair, lest they "take also of
the tree of life and live forever," saying, "Behold, the man is become as
one of _us!_" This provoked a lengthy discussion the very first evening as
to whether it meant that there was more than one God. And Clytie's
view--that God called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and
editors of newspapers do--at length prevailed over the polytheistic
hypothesis of Cousin Bill J.

On they read to the Deluge, when man became so very bad indeed that God
was sorry for ever having made him, and said: "I will destroy man whom I