"Too much?" echoed Isaac plaintively.
"Yes,—oh, a great deal too much," said Daisy, earnest in voice and look. "You loved that bag of gold more than me, father—more than everything—more than God."
Isaac's attention seemed arrested. He repeated "More than God!" not in his usual dreamy manner, but as if awe-struck.
"Yes, more than you loved God," said Daisy, calmly and clearly. "And, father, that means that you did not love God at all, for if you had you must have loved Him best. And it means that you didn't think about the Lord Jesus, or have Him for your Saviour. And that means that if you had died, you would have had no Heaven to go to. For the gold was your god and your heaven and your everything—and, father, if you had died, you must have left that behind, and then you would have had nothing left—nothing at all."
Isaac gazed steadfastly at Daisy's flushed and eager face.
"Nothing left?" he said.
"No, nothing—nothing!" said Daisy, almost passionately, yet she spoke slowly still that he might understand. "O father, it is like the verse that I read to you yesterday out of Proverbs—'THERE IS THAT MAKETH HIMSELF RICH, YET HATH NOTHING; THERE IS THAT MAKETH HIMSELF POOR, YET HATH GREAT RICHES.' Say the words after me, father dear."
Isaac obeyed in his half-childish way, but before finishing he stopped. "Yes, I made myself rich, sure enough," he said, with a momentary gleam of satisfaction. "I toiled, and I saved, and I did it all. But I didn't make myself poor. It was that wretched thief, Daisy—as deserves to be hung too."
"We needn't think about him," said Daisy. "He will be punished some day, one way or another. People always are, if they go on in wrong-doing. I like better to think of it the other way—that God took away your money, so that you might be free to think about Him. O father, I do so want you to learn to serve God."
Isaac was silent for some seconds, and when he spoke it was with a recurrence to Daisy's text. "Makes himself rich—yet has nothing," he muttered. "That wasn't me, Daisy. I'd got lots,—only it's all gone now—all gone."