wonder, bleeding with defeat,
And as she walks, the shining snow crunches under her feet.

The ghosts of trees reach icy arms up to a starless sky,
Mourning the gods who never were that rest here when they die.

Pale angels kneel beside the graves stretching row on row,
And madmen carrying mouldy flowers quickly come and go.

Chapter LVI

Having passed through the graveyard of the gods, Gud came to a vast
beyond where there really was nothing, when the gods are dead there can
be nothing. And so Gud journeyed on, for he would not stop at nothing,
and he came to a church, because it was Saturday night.

Crouched by the steps of the church was a poor old skeptic begging alms
of faith.

"Why do you beg?" asked Gud.

"Because I have need of faith," said the skeptic.

"If I should give you a great amount of faith, would you use it to
destroy your doubts, or would you go out and proclaim it to others, and
thus give it all away?"

"Try me," said the skeptic.

"Then believe that I am Gud."

"I will, if you can prove it to me!"

"What proof shall I offer you?" asked Gud. For while he knew that proof
was not necessary to faith, yet he was willing to humor the poor old
skeptic because he was so weighted down with his burden of doubts.

"If you be Gud," said the skeptic, "then you should know all things."

"And that I do."

"Very well," said the skeptic, "how mad is a wet hen?"

Whereupon Gud called down fire from the heaven of that place and smote
the blasphemer so that he died.

But when Gud called down the fire that smote the skeptic, alas, he
destroyed the church house also. The next morning when the sun arose,
behold the spot where the church had been was a greensward of two-bladed
grass. But presently worshippers came and seated themselves upon the
grass and lifted up their eyes in prayer.

Gud did not wait to see who answered their prayers, for he had gone on
into a realm where the nights are as cold as greed, and where little
stars are born--and comets, like tadpoles, lose their tails, and burst
into shining suns.

And yet again Gud passed on beyond all stars and on and on until he
reached the limits of thoughts, beyond which were only dim traces of
imagination. And passing still on and ever on he came to a place where
only the hope of faith abides, and lo, he was confronted here with a
great wall of light.

And Gud knew--for he still knew all things--that this wall of li