The elder had closed his admonitions by warning his daughter not to be listening to any teachings of the preacher's wife, for she was a backslider, and she had fallen from grace. "In the first place," said the elder, laying down the law with uplifted hand, "she's a Episcopalian,—I heard her say that herself, when she first come here; and her letter of dismissal was from a church with some Popish name,—St. Robert or Stephen,—I don't just remember. I've seen one of those churches. Thank the Lord, there isn't one in Lockhaven. They have candles burnin', and a big brass cross. Rags of Popery,—they all belong to the Scarlet Woman, I tell you! But she's a backslider even from that, fer they have some truth; she's a child of the Evil One, with her unbelief!"
This was more than Alfaretta could bear. "Indeed, pa," she cried, "you don't know how good she is, or you wouldn't be sayin' that! Look how she's slaved this winter fer the families that 'a' been in trouble, havin' no work!"
"'Tain't what she's done, Alfaretta," said her father solemnly; "works without faith is of no avail. What says the Scripture? 'A man is justified by faith' (by faith, Alfaretta!) 'without the deeds of the law.' And what says the confession?"
Alfaretta, by force of habit, began to stumble through the answer: "'We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand—at the hand—of God, by reason of'"—Here her memory failed her.
"Well," her father said impatiently, "can't you remember the rest? 'Works done by unregenerate men are sinful, and cannot please God,' you know. Go on."
But Alfaretta could not go on, and the elder would not betray his own lack of memory by attempting to quote.
"So you see," he continued, "it isn't any use to talk of how good and kind she is, or what she does; it is what she believes that will settle her eternal salvation."
But Alfaretta was unconvinced. "Well, sir," she said stubbornly, "it don't seem to me that way, fer she's the best woman, except mother, I ever saw. I reckon if anybody goes to heaven, she will; don't you, Thaddeus?"
Thaddeus was tilting back in his chair, his curly black head against the whitewashed wall, and thus suddenly and embarrassingly appealed to—for he was divided between a desire to win the approval of the elder and to show his devotion to Alfaretta—he brought his chair down with a clatter of all four legs on the floor, and looked first at the father and then at the daughter, but did not speak.
"Don't you, Thaddeus?" repeated Alfaretta severely, for the elder was dumb with astonishment.