come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven.' Paul was of the kingdom for a time, but he had the blundering
ill-luck to mention it. He put his arms round Dick, who lay awake there,
and he cried and said good-bye, and told Dick that he was going to die
and be an angel. And in his heart he forgave Dick--nebulously but with
sincerity--not particularizing things, but offering plenary grace for
all offences. And Dick took fright and ran with bare legs projecting
from his scanty nightshirt, and blubbered that Paul was dying--that he
said so, that he was sure of it. And Paul, listening at the top of the
stairs, heard the news given and forgave everybody, and went back to bed
again and was filled with inexpressible joy of assured longing. The
good mother came upstairs carrying Dick, who had been solaced with
unaccustomed supper of bread and treacle--he was sticky and crumby with
it hours afterwards when Paul still lay crying--and she gave Paul such a
hiding for his heartless wickedness as he had never had in all his
days till then. It was not the pain of the flogging, though he had been
chastened with a liberal hand, that kept him in tears throughout that
wretched night. It was the bitter sense of injustice, for Paul had
imputed his dream to himself for holiness, and had believed so truly and
had meant so well.

And the matter did not end there Paul had slept on his trouble and had
forgotten it, as children can. He was stripped to the waist, and was
taking his morning wash at the sink in the back-kitchen when his father
came, carrying in his left hand an instrument called the 'tawse,' a
broad flat leathern strap, cut into strips at one end. The strips had
been hardened in the fire, and the 'tawse 'was a holy horror to the
boys, who saw it often and were threatened with it sometimes, but who
had felt it never. Armstrong the father came in pale and gray, his hands
quivering, and he gave Paul a little sermon. The ineradicable Ayrshire
accent shook out in his voice more strongly than common, for he was an
idle dreamer, and a man who hated to see pain, and to whom it was an
agony to inflict it.

'This will hurt me far more than it will hurt you, my lad, said
Armstrong senior; and Paul, by a swift, sidelong movement of the mind,
decided that he had been born a liar because his father was one before
him.

Then the father expanded upon the enormity of his wickedness, and told
him how he had shamefully tri