s were
those, do you suppose, that God spoke to Spurling?"

"The kind of words which God always speaks to men; He told him the
truth about himself."

"The truth about himself? There are few who could endure to hear
that."

"Yes, He would accuse him with a question, I think."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because that is the way in which God usually speaks to men. He asked
Adam a question, and Adam hid himself; he asked Cain a question, and
Cain became a vagabond in the earth."

They sat in silence awhile, and then Granger said, "And if God were to
speak to me, what question would He ask?"

"I think he would say, 'John Granger, by how much are you better than
Spurling, whom you condemn?'"

"You are right; yes, I think He would say that. Even I have asked
myself that question before to-day."

"You did not ask yourself; it was God's voice."

"And I could give no answer to what He said. Pere Antoine, before we
met, I had often wondered what I would say to Spurling should we meet
again. I had planned all manner of kindly phrases to make him again my
friend; but I had thought of him as coming to me prosperous, with the
approval of the world. When he came to me in poverty, asking help, in
peril of his life for a sin which had been almost mine, I turned him
away. He had chosen me out from among all men between Winnipeg and the
Klondike, as the only one to whom he could safely go for help; and I
turned him away. I see it clearly now; God sent to me this man whom I
had wished to murder, when he had performed my crime, that, by
endangering my life for his, I might cleanse myself. When all men had
failed him, he and God expected that I, at least, would understand.
But for Mordaunt, I might have had to flee as he fled, changed by the
raising of a gun and hasty pulling of a trigger into a Judas to all
that is best; I might have had to support within me his utter
solitariness and agony of mind, and have been compelled to see myself
as debased throughout and forever by a single, momentary act. How he
must have suffered! I shall fear to die now; till now I have been
afraid only of life."

"Why will you fear to die?"

"Because I shall meet with Spurling, and then I shall hear God's
question and His accusing voice."

The priest laid a hand upon his shoulder gently. "Ah, my child, but
you forget," he said; "in the country where Spurling has gone he will
have learnt how to understand."

That thought was new to Granger, t