“As to size,” said I, “I should like to have a large one—that is, if you can afford me one—I do not come to buy.”
“Oh, friend,” said the precise-looking man, “if you come here expecting to have a Bible for nothing, you are mistaken—we—”
“I would scorn to have a Bible for nothing,” said I, “or anything else; I came not to beg, but to barter; there is no shame in that, especially in a country like this, where all folks barter.”
“Oh, we don’t barter,” said the precise man, “at least Bibles; you had better depart.”
“Stay, brother,” said the man with the countenance of a lion, “let us ask a few questions; this may be a very important case; perhaps the young man has had convictions.”
“Not I,” I exclaimed, “I am convinced of nothing, and with regard to the Bible—I don’t believe—”
“Hey!” said the man with the lion countenance, and there he stopped. But with that “Hey” the walls of the house seemed to shake, the windows rattled, and the porter whom I had seen in front of the house came running up the steps, and looked into the apartment through the glass of the door.
There was silence for about a minute—the same kind of silence which succeeds a clap of thunder.
At last the man with the lion countenance, who had kept his eyes fixed upon me, said calmly, “Were you about to say that you don’t believe in the Bible, young man?”
“No more than in anything else,” said I; “you were talking of convictions—I have no convictions. It is not easy to believe in the Bible till one is convinced that there is a Bible.”