, the sooner will
conscience of wrong make a coward of him; and herein Redmain had a
far-off kindred with the just. After the night he had passed, he was
now in one of his terror-fits; and this much may be said for his good
sense--that, if there was anywhere a hell for the use of anybody, he
was justified in anticipating a free entrance.

"Mewks!" he called, suddenly, and his tone was loud and angry.

Mewks was by his bedside instantly.

"Get out with you! If I find you in this room again, without having
been called, I will kill you! I am strong enough for that, even without
this pain. They won't hang a dying man, and where I am going they will
rather like it."

Mewks vanished.

"You need not mind, my girl," he went on, to Mary. "Everybody knows I
am ill--very ill. Sit down there, on the foot of the bed, only take
care you don't shake it, and let me talk to you. People, you know, say
nowadays there ain't any hell--or perhaps none to speak of?"

"I should think the former more likely than the latter," said Mary.

"You don't believe there is any? I _am_ glad of that! for you are a
good girl, and ought to know."

"You mistake me, sir. How can I imagine there is no hell, when _he_
said there was?"

"Who's _he_?"

"The man who knows all about it, and means to put a stop to it some
day."

"Oh, yes; I see! Hm!--But I don't for the life of me see what a fellow
is to make of it all--don't you know? Those parsons! They will have it
there's no way out of it but theirs, and I never could see a handle
anywhere to that door!"

"_I_ don't see what the parsons have got to do with it, or, at least,
what you have got to do with the parsons. If a thing is true, you have
as much to do with it as any parson in England; if it is not true,
neither you nor they have anything to do with it."

"But, I tell you, if it be all as true as--as--that we are all sinners,
I don't know what to do with it!"

"It seems to me a simple thing. _That_ man as much as said he knew all
about it, and came to find men that were lost, and take them home."

"He can't well find one more lost than I am! But how am I to believe
it? How can it be true? It's ages since he was here, if ever he was at
all, and there hasn't been a sign of him ever since, all the time!"

"There you may be quite wrong. I think I could find you some who
believe him just as near them now as ever he was to his own
brothers--believe that he hears them when they speak to him, a