verted, when he wasn't in drink; fer he was good in his heart,
Tom was. But he wasn't no Christian, an' I'm not sayin' he isn't lost.
I'm only sayin',"--this with a sudden passion, and knotting her tremulous
hands hard together,--"I'm only sayin' I can't love God no more! Him
havin' all the power--and then look at Tom an' me"--

Helen tried to speak, but Mrs. Davis would not listen. "No," she cried,
"yer the preacher's wife, but I must say it. He never give Tom a chance,
an' how am I goin' to love Him now? Tom,"--she pointed a shaking finger
at the coffin in the next room,--"born, as you might say, drinkin'. His
father died in a drunken fit, and his mother give it to her baby with her
milk. Then, what schoolin' did he get? Nothin', 'less it was his mother
lickin' him. Tom's often told me that. He hadn't no trade learned,
neither,--just rafted with men as bad as him. Is it any wonder he wasn't
converted?"

"I know all that," Helen began to say gently, but Mrs. Davis could not
check the torrent of her despairing grief.

"He didn't have no chance; an' he didn't ask to be born, neither. God put
him here, an' look at the way He made him live; look at this house; see
the floor, how the water runs down into that corner: it is all sagged an'
leanin'--the whole thing is rotten look at that one window, up against
the wall; not a ray of sunshine ever struck it. An' here's where God's
made us live. Six of us, now the baby's come. Children was the only thing
we was rich in, and we didn't have food enough to put in their mouths, or
decent clothes to cover 'em. Look at the people 'round us here--livin' in
this here row of tenements--drinkin', lying' swearin'. What chance had
Tom? God never give him any, but He could of, if He'd had a mind to. So
I can't love Him, Mrs. Ward,--I can't love Him; Him havin' all the power,
and yet lettin' Tom's soul go down to hell; fer Tom couldn't help it, and
him livin' so. I ain't denyin' religion, ner anything like that--I'm a
Christian woman, an' a member--but I can't love Him, so there's no use
talkin'--I can't love Him."

She turned away and shook the shirt out, hanging it over the back of a
chair in front of the stove, to dry. Helen had followed her, and put her
arm across the thin, bent shoulders, her eyes full of tears, though the
widow's were hard and bright.

"Oh, Mrs. Davis," she cried, "of course you could not love a God who
would never give Tom a chance and then punish him; of course yo