d with beds of petunias and
fuschias, tiger-lilies and dahlias; where were a great clump of white
lilacs and many bushes of yellow roses; a lawn that stretched unbrokenly
to the windows of the next big house where lived the gentle stranger with
the soft, warm little voice who had chosen the good name of Lillian May.

Life was severely earnest but by no means impracticable.

CHAPTER V

THE LIFE OF CRIME IS APPRAISED AND CHOSEN

It came to seem expedient to Bernal, however, in the first spring of his
new life, to make a final choice between early death and a life, of sin.
Matters came to press upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get
one into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one meant to die at
once. This was an alternative not without its lures, despite the warnings
preached all about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one had
come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but one of the Feet, as he had,
might make it still more interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this
reason, be always shut up in Heaven. In his secret heart was a lively
desire to see just what they did to Milo Barrus, if he _should_ continue
to spell God with a little g on his very death-bed--that is, if he could
see it without disadvantage to himself: But then, you could save that up,
because you _must_ die sometime, like Xerxes the Great; and meantime,
there was the life of evil now opening wide to the vision with all
enticing refreshments.

First, it meant no school. He had ceased to picture relief in this matter
by the school-house burning some morning, preferably a Monday morning,
one second after school had taken in. For a month he had daily dramatised
to himself the building's swift destruction amid the kind and merry
flames. But Allan, to whom he had one day hinted the possibility of this
gracious occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would probably
have school in the Methodist church until a new school-house could be
built. For Allan loved his school and his teacher.

But a life of evil promised other joys besides this negative one of no
school. In his latest Sunday-school book, Ralph Overton, the good boy, not
only attended school slavishly, so that at thirteen he "could write a
good business hand"; but he practised those little tricks of picking up
every pin, always untying the string instead of cutting it, keeping his
shoes neatly polished and his hands clean, which were, in a simpler day,