and sober life."

"But," said Donal, "suppose God, reading your heart, saw that you would
go on as bad as ever, and that to leave you any longer would only be to
make it the more difficult for him to do anything with you afterwards?"

"He might give me a chance! It is hard to expect a poor fellow to be as
good as he is himself!"

"The poor fellow was made in his image!" suggested Donal.

"Very poorly made then!" said the earl with a sneer. "We might as well
have been made in some other body's image!"

Donal thought with himself.

"Did you ever know a good woman, my lord?" he asked.

"Know a good woman?--Hundreds of them!--The other sort was more to my
taste! but there was my own mother! She was rather hard on my father
now and then, but she was a good woman."

"Suppose you had been in her image, what then?"

"You would have had some respect for me!"

"Then she was nearer the image of God than you?"

"Thousands of miles!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman?"

"Know a bad woman? Hundreds that would take your heart's blood as you
slept to make a philtre with!"

"Then you saw a difference between such a woman and your mother?"

"The one was of heaven, the other of hell--that was all the little
difference!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman grow better?"

"No, never.--Stop! let me see. I did once know a woman--she was a
married woman too--that made it all the worse--all the better I mean:
she took poison--in good earnest, and died--died, sir--died, I
say--when she came to herself, and knew what she had done! That was the
only woman I ever knew that grew better. How long she might have gone
on better if she hadn't taken the poison, I can't tell. That fixed her
good, you see!"

"If she had gone on, she might have got as good as your mother?"

"Oh, hang it! no; I did not say that!"

"I mean, with God teaching her all the time--for ten thousand years,
say--and she always doing what he told her!"

"Oh, well! I don't know anything about that. I don't know what God had
to do with my mother being so good! She was none of your canting sort!"

"There is an old story," said Donal, "of a man who was the very image
of God, and ever so much better than the best of women."

"He couldn't have been much of a man then!"

"Were you ever afraid, my lord?"

"Yes, several times--many a time."

"That man never knew what fear was."

"By Jove!"

"His mother was good, and he was better: your mother was good, and you
a