m death," he
replied, but with none of his usual half-sarcastic self-confidence.

"You think God did that?"

"Alistair, do you dare to blaspheme the Almighty?"

I felt at that moment like a cat playing with a mouse. My lips, I know,
curved in a smile of mockery, and yet I will swear--yes, even to my own
heart--that all I said that day I said in pure mischief, with no evil
intent. It seemed that I, Alistair Ralston, the dolt, the ignoramus,
longed to try mental conclusions with this brilliant and opinionated
divine. He bade me praise God. In reply I praised--the Devil, and I
forced him to hear me. Absolutely I broke into a flood of words, and he
sat silent. I compared the good and evil in the scheme of the world,
balancing them in the scales, the one against the other. I took up the
stock weapon of atheism, the deadly nature, the deadly outcome of free
will. I used it with skill. The names of Strauss, Comte, Schopenhauer,
Renan, a dozen others, sprang from my lips. The dreary doctrine of the
illimitable triumph of sin, of the appalling mistake of the permission
granted it to step into the scheme of creation, in order that its
presence might create a _raison d'etre_ for the power of personal action
one way or the other in mankind--such matters as these I treated with a
vehement eloquence and command of words that laid a spell upon the
doctor. Going very far, I dared to exclaim that since God had allowed
his own scheme to get out of gear, the only hope of man lay in the
direction of the opposing force, in frank and ardent Satanism.

When at length I ceased from speaking, I expected Dr Wedderburn to rise
up in his wrath and to annihilate me, but he sat still in his chair with
a queer, and, as I thought, puzzled expression upon his face. At last he
said, as if to himself:

"The miracle of Balaam; verily, the miracle of Balaam."

The ass had indeed spoken as never ass spoke before. I waited a moment,
then I said:--

"Well, why don't you rebuke me, or why don't you try to controvert me?"

Again he looked upon me, very uneasily I thought, and with something
that was almost fear in his keen eyes.

"Ah!" he said, "I have praised the Lord many a morning and evening for
his gift of words to me. It seems others bestow that gift too.
Alistair"--and here his voice became deeply solemn--"where have you been
visiting when you lay there, mad to all seeming? In what dark place have
you been to gather destruction for men? With wh