Gray Michael's exposition illustrated nothing beyond his own narrow intellectual limitations. His cold cloud of words obscured the prophet's sunshine, and the light went out of the dying man's eyes, leaving only alarm. He trembled on the brink of the horrid truth; he heard it thinly veiled in the other's stern utterance, saw it looking from his hard blue eyes. After the sermon, silence followed, broken by Vallack, who coughed once and again, then raised himself and braced his heart to the tremendous question that demanded answering.
"I wants your awn feelin' like, mister. I must have it. I caan't sleep no more wi'out knawin' the best or worst. You be the justest man ever I seed or heard tell on out the Scriptures. An' I wants 'e to gimme your opinion like. S'pose you was the Judge an' I comed afore 'e an' the Books was theer and you'd read 'em an' had to conclude 'pon 'em—?"
The fisherman reflected. Vallack's proposition did not strike him as particularly grotesque. He felt it was a natural question, and he only regretted that it had been put, because, though he had driven more than one young man to righteousness along the path of terror, in this present case the truth came too late save to add another horror to death. He believed in all sincerity that as surely as the young man before him presently died, so surely would he be damned, but he saw no particular object in stating the fact. Such intelligence might tell upon Vallack's physical condition—a thing of all others to be avoided, for Gray Michael held that the sufferer's only chance of a happy eternity was increased and lengthened opportunity in time.
"It ed'n for me to sit in the Judgment Seat, Albert. 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lard.' You must allus hold in mind that theer's mighty few saved alive, best o' times. Many be called, but few chosen. Men go down to the graave every second o' the day an' night, but if you could see the sawls a streamin' away, thicker'n a cloud of starlings, you'd find a mass, black as a storm, went down long, an' awnly just a summer cloud like o' the blessed riz up. Hell's bigger'n Heaven; an' er's need to be, for Heaven's like to be a lonely plaace, when all's said. I won't speak no more 'bout that subjec'. 'Tis good fashion weather for 'e just now, an us'll hope as you ban't gwaine to die for many a day."
"Say it out, mister, say it out. I knaws what you means. You reckons if I gaws I'm lost."
"My poor sawl, justice is justice; an' the Lard's all for justice an' no less. Theer's no favorin' wi' Him, Albert."
"But mightn't He favor the whole bilin' of us—good'n bad—cause He made us?"
"Surely not. Wheer's the justice o' that? If He done that, how'd the godly get their fair dues—eh? Be the righteous man to share God's Heaven wi' publicans an' sinners? That ed'n justice anyhow. Don't fret, lad; tears won't mend bad years. Bide quiet an' listen to me whiles I pray for 'e."
The man in the bed had grown very white, his eyes burned wildly out of a shrunken face, and he gripped the sheets and shivered in pure physical terror.
"I caan't die, I caan't die, not yet," he groaned, "pray to the Lard to keep me from dyin' yet a while, mister. Arsk en to give me just a lil time, 'cause I'm that sorry for my scarlet sins."