ther?'

Andrew made no reply to this appeal. It sounded like imprisonment for
life, I suppose. But thought was moving in him. After a long pause,
during which the son's heart was hungering for a word whereon to hang
a further hope, the old man spoke again, muttering as if he were only
speaking his thoughts unconsciously.

'Where's the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is going to
heaven. I must go to hell. No. It's no good. Better leave it as it is. I
daren't see her. It would kill me to see her.'

'It will kill her not to see you; and that will be one sin more on your
conscience, father.'

Andrew got up and walked about the room. And Robert only then arose from
his knees.

'And there's my mother,' he said.

Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the
light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.

'Father,' he said, going up to him.

The old man stopped in his walk, turned, and faced his son.

'Father,' repeated Robert, 'you've go to repent; and God won't let you
off; and you needn't think it. You'll have to repent some day.'

'In hell, Robert,' said Andrew, looking him full in the eyes, as he had
never looked at him before. It seemed as if even so much acknowledgment
of the truth had already made him bolder and honester.

'Yes. Either on earth or in hell. Would it not be better on earth?'

'But it will be no use in hell,' he murmured.

In those few words lay the germ of the preference for hell of poor
souls, enfeebled by wickedness. They will not have to do anything
there--only to moan and cry and suffer for ever, they think. It is
effort, the out-going of the living will that they dread. The sorrow,
the remorse of repentance, they do not so much regard: it is the action
it involves; it is the having to turn, be different, and do differently,
that they shrink from; and they have been taught to believe that
this will not be required of them there--in that awful refuge of the
will-less. I do not say they think thus: I only say their dim, vague,
feeble feelings are such as, if they grew into thought, would take this
form. But tell them that the fire of God without and within them will
compel them to bethink themselves; that the vision of an open door
beyond the smoke and the flames will ever urge them to call up the
ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the torturing spirit of God in
them will keep their consciences awake, not to remind them of what they