He quailed, he quailed hard, and sez he—
“You talk like a fool!”
“No,” sez I; “you are the fool, for it is the fool that hath said that there is no God, and you see there is,” sez I—“a God that punishes sin, who is even now a-punishin’ you; a God who said, “Cursed is he who putteth the cup to his neighbor’s lips.” Sez I, “You have prospered and grown rich in your bizness of beast-makin’, and you didn’t believe there wuz Eternal Jestice a-watchin’ over your sinful deeds, and you find now that you wuz a fool to believe it. For you find now that there is a God. You find now that you are cursed for your sin in makin’ murderers and assassins and wife-beaters and child-killers!”
Sez I, “You loved little Rob; your bad heart is achin’ now this minute to think it wuz your hand that dealt out the poison that reached him through his father’s weakness and miserable vice!”
He wuz demute. He didn’t say a word, but a look come over his face that I don’t want to see agin. He didn’t want to give up and own up his guilt and repent, and he wuz jest crushed right down about little Rob. He wuz jest tosted both ways, between agony and selfishness. He didn’t want to give up his profitable bizness of beast-makin’, and he wuz horrow struck to think that his own little idol had fell a victim.
His face looked like a humbly fallen angel’s, or how I spoze they look. I never see one fall.
He didn’t say another word, but turned on his heel and walked off.
The last word he said to me, as I stated heretofore, wuz callin’ me “a fool.”
But I didn’t care for that. I knew I wuzn’t.
But still that broken-hearted father, that wretched, lonesome husband sot there by the side of the road. Finally he spoke——