cle Frapp, and my evenings
and nights perforce in the company of the two eldest of my cousins.
He was errand boy at an oil shop and fervently pious, and of him I saw
nothing until the evening except at meals; the other was enjoying the
midsummer holidays without any great elation; a singularly thin and
abject, stunted creature he was, whose chief liveliness was to pretend
to be a monkey, and who I am now convinced had some secret disease that
drained his vitality away. If I met him now I should think him a pitiful
little creature and be extremely sorry for him. Then I felt only a
wondering aversion. He sniffed horribly, he was tired out by a couple
of miles of loafing, he never started any conversation, and he seemed to
prefer his own company to mine. His mother, poor woman, said he was the
"thoughtful one."

Serious trouble came suddenly out of a conversation we held in bed one
night. Some particularly pious phrase of my elder cousin's irritated me
extremely, and I avowed outright my entire disbelief in the whole scheme
of revealed religion. I had never said a word about my doubts to any one
before, except to Ewart who had first evolved them. I had never settled
my doubts until at this moment when I spoke. But it came to me then that
the whole scheme of salvation of the Frappes was not simply doubtful,
but impossible. I fired this discovery out into the darkness with the
greatest promptitude.

My abrupt denials certainly scared my cousin amazingly.

At first they could not understand what I was saying, and when they
did I fully believe they expected an instant answer in thunderbolts and
flames. They gave me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder
sat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little
frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay
what I had said, what could I do but confirm my repudiation?

"There's no hell," I said, "and no eternal punishment. No God would be
such a fool as that."

My elder cousin cried aloud in horror, and the younger lay scared, but
listening. "Then you mean," said my elder cousin, when at last he could
bring himself to argue, "you might do just as you liked?"

"If you were cad enough," said I.

Our little voices went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got
out of bed and made his brother do likewise, and knelt in the night
dimness and prayed at me. That I found trying, but I held out valiantly.
"Forgive him," said m