h awful terrors that I am
sad only to remember them; it was better to freeze out on the sea,
if father would let me go with him. I was often hungry and often
weary; I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of; I was
frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat. And I had no
mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off.
Father was not cross or unkind; he just did not understand. Even in
those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable
and to suffer so much."

He spoke then in a very guarded way about that revelation in the
boat, for he felt rebuked for his want of faith in it; and he said
sorrowfully, as he left the subject, "Why, then, should God send
angels to men? They are feared of them while they are present, and
they doubt them when they are gone away. He sent one to comfort me,
and I denied it to my own heart; yes, even though I sorely needed
the comfort."

Then he took John to Shetland with him. He showed him, in strong,
simple words, the old Norse town, with its gray skies and its
gray seas, and its fishing-smacks hanging to the rushing sides of
foaming mountains. He described the hoary cliffs and their world
of sea-birds, the glorious auroras, the heavenly summers, and the
deadly chillness of the winter fogs as one drift after another
passed in dim and desolate majesty over the sea and land.

Slowly and with some hesitation he got to Nanna in her little stone
hut, braiding her straw and nursing her crippled baby. The tears
came into his eyes, he clasped his knees with his hands as if to
steady himself, while he spoke rapidly of her marriage with Nicol
Sinclair, the drowning of her father and brothers, the cruelty of her
husband, his desertion, his return, Nanna's terror of losing Vala,
the fatal typhus, her desolation, and her spiritual anguish about
Vala's condition. All these things he told John with that powerful
eloquence which is born of living, intense feeling.

John was greatly moved by the whole simple, tragic story, but he
spoke only on the last topic, for it seemed to him to dwarf all
other sorrow. It roused his indignation, and he said it was a
just and holy anger. He wondered how men, and especially mothers,
could worship a God who was supposed to damn little children before
they were born. He vowed that neither Moloch nor Baal, nor any pagan
deity, had been so brutal. He was amazed that ministers believing
such a doctrine dared to marry. W