ed that night
on the platform. Yes, it occurred to me that if one had not a dollar
one could not become an atheist. Billah! I was scandalized. For no
matter how irreverent one likes to pose, one ought to reverence at
least his Maker. I am a Christian by the grace of Allah, and my
ancestors are counted among the martyrs of the Church. And thanks to
my parents, I have been duly baptized and confirmed. For which I
respect them the more, and love them. Now, is it not absurd that I
should come here and pay a hard dollar to hear this heretical
speechifier insult my parents and my God? Better the ring of
Al-Mutanabbi's scimitars and spears than the clatter of these
atheistical bones!"

From which we infer that Shakib was not open to reason on the subject.
He would draw his friend away from the verge of the abyss at any cost.
"And this," continues he, "did not require much effort. For Khalid
like myself is constitutionally incapable of denying God. We are from
the land in which God has always spoken to our ancestors."

And the argument between the shrewd verse-maker and the foolish
philosopher finally hinges on this: namely, that these atheists are
not honest investigators, that in their sweeping generalisations, as
in their speciosity and hypocrisy, they are commercially perverse.
And Khalid is not long in deciding about the matter. He meets with an
accident--and accidents have always been his touchstones of
success--which saves his soul and seals the fate of atheism.

One evening, returning from a ramble in the Park, he passes by the
Hall where his favourite Mountebank was to lecture on the Gospel of
Soap. But not having the price of admittance that evening, and being
anxious to hear the orator whom he had idolised, Khalid bravely
appeals to his generosity in this quaint and touching note: "My
pocket," he wrote, "is empty and my mind is hungry. Might I come to
your Table to-night as a beggar?" And the man at the stage door, who
carries the note to the orator, returns in a trice, and tells Khalid
to lift himself off. Khalid hesitates, misunderstands; and a heavy
hand is of a sudden upon him, to say nothing of the heavy boot.

Ay, and that boot decided him. Atheism, bald, bold, niggardly, brutal,
pretending withal, Khalid turns from its door never to look again in
that direction, Shakib is right. "These people," he growled, "are not
free thinkers, but free stinkards. They do need soap to wash their
hearts and souls."

An