repents, he did not believe that God would let her in. He supported
this belief by the profoundly childish contention that if God let
EVERYBODY in, then there would be no use having a hell at all. What
was the use of being good all your life if the bad people could
get into Heaven at the last minute by telling God they were sorry
and never would do anything bad again as long as they lived? And
was not God the wisest Being in all the world? He knew EVERYTHING!
He knew all about Rachel Carter. She would go to the bad place and
stay there forever, even after the "resurrection" and the end of
the world by fire in 1883, a calamity to which he looked forward
with grave concern and no little trepidation at the thoughtful age
of six.

At first they told him his father had gone off as a soldier to
fight against the Indians and the British. He knew that a war was
going on. Men with guns were drilling in the pasture up beyond
his grandfather's house, and there was talk of Indian "massacrees,"
and Simon Girty's warriors, and British red-coats, and the awful
things that happened to little boys who disobeyed their elders
and went swimming, or berrying, or told even the teeniest kind of
fibs. He overheard his grandfather and the neighbours discussing
a battle on Lake Erie, and rejoiced with them over the report of
a great victory for "our side." Vaguely he had grasped the news of
a horrible battle on the Tippecanoe River, far away in the wilderness
to the north and west, in which millions of Indians were slain,
and he wondered how many of them his father had killed with his
rifle,--a weapon so big and long that he came less than half way
up the barrel when he stood beside it.

His father was a great shot. Everybody said so. He could kill wild