The old dealer sighed as they passed the murder counter. "Some of this stock moves very slowly," he confessed. "Indeed it keeps me busy now-a-days finding enough fresh stock to supply the demand."
Gud was a little puzzled over the nature of this business. "Your trade," he remarked, "is, I suppose, with the inhabitants of these neighboring hells, supplying them with new kinds of sins?"
"No indeed," replied the dealer, who seemed a little insulted. "The dwellers in hells are fed up on sin. I never deal with branded sinners. I cater only to the best of righteous trade."
"Oh, I see, you bootleg sin in the heavens."
"No, no, I trade with mortals, and I sell only to the conscientious and the righteous."
"And yet, you are stocked with every sin in the calendar; where is the value to the righteous in such stock?"
"Merely a matter of time and place," explained the dealer, "and the prevailing ethical ideas of my clients. You see my business is to buy up the moral offal of one place or time and sell it at another time or place when or where it has high value as virtue."
"Do you sell for cash or credit?"
"As I do not deal with hardened sinners who would admit the value of my wares, but only with the righteous, I dare not give credit. But as for cash, that is not practical either, as there can be no universal medium of exchange between people whose fundamental ideas of morality differ—so I am obliged to trade by barter."
"That must be troublesome."