that Satan was waiting for me
to get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap
imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not
happen. He proceeded with his subject:

"Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years."

"That's grand!" I said.

"Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and
those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of
his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should
turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall
get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career
entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain
of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth
nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the
old chain." He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments,
then said: "Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed,
his new career has begun. There will be consequences."

It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.

"But for this change certain things would happen twelve days from now.
For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive
on the scene at exactly the right moment--four minutes past ten, the
long-ago appointed instant of time--and the water would be shoal, the
achievement easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds too late,
now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper water. He will do his best,
but both will drown."

"Oh, Satan! Oh, dear Satan!" I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes,
"save them! Don't let it happen. I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my
loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor mother!"

I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he was not moved. He made me
sit down again, and told me I must hear him out.

"I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I had
not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from
his drenching; one of your race's fantastic and desolating scarlet
fevers would follow, with pathetic after-effects; for forty-six years
he would lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying
night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life
back?"

"Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity leave it as it is."

"It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and
done him so good a