She crawled to his feet, and clasped his knees with her shaking arms.
"Say he isn't,--say he isn't!"

But the presence of that dead man asserted the hopelessness of John's
creed; no human pity could dim his faith, and he had no words of comfort
for the distracted woman who clung to him. He could only lift her and try
to soothe her, but she did not seem to hear him until he put her baby in
her arms; at the touch of its little soft face against her drawn cheek,
she trembled violently, and then came the merciful relief of tears. She
did not ask the preacher again to say that her husband was not lost; she
had no hope that he would tell her anything but what she already knew.
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die." She tried, poor thing, to find
some comfort in the words he spoke of God's love for her; listening with
a pathetic silence which wrung his heart.

When John left her, beating his way home through the blinding snow, his
face was as haggard as her own. He could not escape from the ultimate
conclusion of his creed,--"He that believeth not shall be damned." Yet he
loved and trusted completely. His confidence in God's justice could not
be shaken; but it was with almost a groan that he said, "O my God, my
God, justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne; mercy and
truth shall go before thy face! But justice with mercy,--justice first!"




CHAPTER XII.


The snow fell all that night, but the day broke exquisitely clear upon a