John was silent. She clutched his arm with her thin fingers, and shook it in her excitement; her pinched, terrified face was close to his.
"He wasn't never converted,—I know that,—but would the Lord have cut him off, sudden-like, in his sin, if He wasn't goin' to save him?"
"We can only trust his wisdom and his goodness."
"But you think he was cut off in his sins—you think—my Tom's lost!"
The preacher did not speak, but the passionate pity in his eyes told her. She put her hands up to her throat as though she were suffocating, and her face grew ghastly.
"Remember, God knows what is best for his children," John said. "He sends this grief of Tom's death to you in his infinite wisdom. He loves you,—He knows best."
"Do you mean," asked the woman slowly, "that it was best fer Tom he should die?"
"I mean this sorrow may be best for you," he answered tenderly. "God knows what you need. He sends sorrow to draw our souls nearer to Him."
"Oh," she exclaimed, her voice broken and hoarse, "I don't want no good fer me, if Tom has to die fer it. An' why should He love me instead o' Tom? Oh, I don't want his love, as wouldn't give Tom another chance! He might 'a' been converted this next revival, fer you would 'a' preached hell,—I know you would, then. No, I don't want no good as comes that way. Oh, preacher, you ain't going to say you think my Tom's burning in hell this night, and me living to be made better by it? Oh, no, no, no!" She crawled to his feet, and clasped his knees with her shaking arms. "Say he isn't,—say he isn't!"
But the presence of that dead man asserted the hopelessness of John's creed; no human pity could dim his faith, and he had no words of comfort for the distracted woman who clung to him. He could only lift her and try to soothe her, but she did not seem to hear him until he put her baby in her arms; at the touch of its little soft face against her drawn cheek, she trembled violently, and then came the merciful relief of tears. She did not ask the preacher again to say that her husband was not lost; she had no hope that he would tell her anything but what she already knew. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." She tried, poor thing, to find some comfort in the words he spoke of God's love for her; listening with a pathetic silence which wrung his heart.