his soul."

Tom Davis shrank as the preacher said "hell." He gave a maudlin cry, and
almost whimpered, "No, sir, no, preacher, I am a-goin' to reform." John
had known what note to touch in this debased nature. Not love, nor hope,
nor shame, would move Tom Davis, but fear stung him into a semblance of
sobriety. "I'll come along wi' you," he went on, swaying back and forth,
and steadying himself with a hand on the lumber against which he had been
leaning. "This is the last time, preacher. You won't see me this way no
more."

Here he hiccoughed, and then laughed, but remembering himself instantly,
drew his forehead into a scowl.

The other men slunk away, for the minister had taken the bottle, and Tom
Davis was following him through the narrow passages between the great
piles of boards, towards his house.

The boy had gone back to his block house; the pile of sawdust in the
sheltered corner was more comfortable and not more cheerless than his own
home.

John left Davis at his door. The man looked cowed, but there was no shame
in his face, and no sense of sin. It was unpleasant to be caught by the
preacher, and he was frightened by that awful word, which it was the
constant effort of his numb, helpless brain to forget.

John went on alone. He walked slowly, with his eyes fixed absently on the
ground, thinking. "Poor Davis," he said, "poor fellow!" The man's future
seemed quite hopeless to the preacher, and, thinking of it, he recalled
Mrs. Davis's regret that he had not spoken of hell in his sermon.

John sighed. His grief at Helen's unbelief was growing in his silence;
yet he realized the inconsistency of his love in hiding his sorrow from
her.

"It is robbing her, not to let her share it," he thought, "but I dare not
speak to her yet."

More than once during the winter he had tried to show her the truth and
the beauty of various doctrines, generally that of reprobation, but she
had always evaded discussion; sometimes lightly, for it seemed such a
small matter to her, but always firmly.

The preacher loitered, stopping to look at the river and the gaunt line
of mills against the sky. He left the path, and went down to the edge of
the white ice, so full of air bubbles, it seemed like solid snow, and
listened to the gurgle of the hurrying water underneath.

A shed was built close to the stream, to shelter a hand fire-engine. It
had not been used for so long that the row of buckets beside it, which
were for dip