"He was a bent sort of boy with a sniff and he wore a long white woollen comforter; there hasn't been such a figure in the world now for hundreds of years. We walked along the promenade that followed the cliff edge, by the bandstand and by the people lounging in deck-chairs. There were swarms of people in their queer holiday clothes, and behind, rows of the pallid grey houses in which they lodged. And my companion bore his testimony. 'Mr. Molesly 'e says that the Day of Judgment might come any minute—come in fire and glory before ever we get to the end of these Leas. And all them people'd be tried....'
"'Jest as they are?'
"'Jest as they are. That woman there with the dog and that fat man asleep in 'is chair and—the policeman.'
"He paused, a little astonished at the Hebraic daring of his thoughts. 'The policeman,' he repeated. 'They'd be weighed and found wanting, and devils would come and torture them. Torture that policeman. Burn him and cut him about. And everybody. Horrible, horrible torture....'
"I had never heard the doctrines of Christianity applied with such particularity before. I was dismayed.
"'I sh'd 'ide,' I said.
"''E'd see you. 'E'd see you and tell the devils,' said my little friend. ''E sees the wicked thoughts in us now....'"
"But did people really believe such stuff as that?" cried Sunray.
"As far as they believed anything," said Sarnac. "I admit it was frightful, but so it was. Do you realise what cramped, distorted minds grew up under such teaching in our under-nourished, infected bodies?"
"Few people could have really believed so grotesque a fairy-tale as hell," said Radiant.