some of them are. From
anybody else I wouldn't stand it," and Robert turned sharply away and
went home.

Michael leant against a groyne to support himself, and looked over the
water, seeing nothing. At first he was angry, and if his son had been
there, he could have struck him; but presently his anger gave way to
pity, to hatred of the girl who had thus seduced him, and to a fixed
determination to save him, whatever it might cost. He pondered again and
again over that verse of Paul's. He did not believe that he should be
excused if he did evil that good might come. He knew that if he did
evil, no matter what the result might be, the penalty to the uttermost
farthing would be exacted. If Christ's purpose to save mankind could not
prevent the Divine anger being poured out on perfect innocence, how much
greater would not that anger have been if it had been necessary for Him
to sin in order to make the world's salvation sure! Michael firmly
believed, too, in the dreadful doctrine that a single lapse from the
strait path is enough to damn a man for ever; that there is no finiteness
in a crime which can be counterbalanced by finite expiation, but that sin
is infinite. Monstrous, we say; and yet it is difficult to find in the
strictest Calvinism anything which is not an obvious dogmatic reflection
of a natural fact, a mere transference to theology of what had been
pressed upon the mind of the creator of the creed as an everyday law of
the world. A crime is infinite in its penalties, and the account is
never really balanced, as many of us know too well, the lash being laid
on us day after day, even to death, for the failings of fifty years ago.

Michael, with his slow ways, remained many weeks undecided. During these
weeks he said nothing more to his son, nor did his son say anything to
him upon the one subject. Robert was more than ever deferent, and even
more than ever affectionate, but there were no signs of any conversion on
his part, and to his deference and affection his father paid no regard.
He walked in a world by himself, shut up in it, and incessantly repeated
the one question, how could he save his son's soul? He pictured himself
as a second Christ. If the Christ, the mighty Saviour, felt His Father's
wrath on that one dreadful night, it was only fitting that he, Michael, a
man who was of so much less worth, should feel it for ever to accomplish
a similar end. He was a little exalted by his resolve, a