mple.

"Neither do I," said Flint; "and what is more, neither does any man,
any more than he knows about God and a future life; and so why should
we go to making up creeds and breaking the heads of people who don't
agree with us when we are all just guessers, and probably all of us
wrong?"

"Then you would take away faith out of the world?"

"Not I,--at least not unless I could see something to take its place,
which at present I don't; and as for these poor devils who are
consoling themselves for their hard lot in this world by the
expectation of a soft thing in the next, I would not be such a brute
as to shake their confidence if I could, and I don't blame them much
if in addition to their heaven they set up a hell where, in
imagination at least, they can put the folks who have been having a
too good time here while they were grunting and sweating under their
weary load."

"Then I wonder you have not more sympathy with an organization like
the Salvation Army, which is doing its best to lighten the burden of
the grunters and sweaters."

"Ah," answered Flint, "I had forgotten the Salvation Army,--it seems
so small a branch of a big subject. I am glad you brought me back. But
let us go a little further back still, for you know it was not the
Army at all that we started to discuss, but only one of its officers,
with a slender little figure and a pale face and a big pair of rather
mournful dark eyes."

"Oh!" said Brady, taken somewhat off his guard, "but you should see
her when she is pleased! They light up just as if a torch had been
kindled in them."

"Oh, they do, do they?" said Flint, with genial raillery; "well, you
see I never saw her so pleased as that."

"Why, don't you remember on her birthday, when I gave her back the
locket?"

"I remember the occasion; but I had precious little chance to see how
her eyes looked, for you stood so close to her that nobody else could
catch a glimpse. I did see something, though."

"What?"

"I saw _you_, and any one more palpably sentimental I never did see."

"Well, what of it? It isn't a crime, I suppose--"

"That depends," Flint answered dryly.

Brady shook off his hand. "What do you mean by that?" he asked
angrily.

"I mean," said Flint, folding his arms and looking at his friend
steadily, "that you have come to the cross-roads. You cannot go on as
you are. You must either give up hanging about Nora Costello, or you
must make up your mind to marry her."

"