“Nobody ever gave me credit for anything I did,” he began, sobbing and gesticulating. “They were all against me from the first. I only wanted a little encouragement. It was a regular conspiracy, but I showed ’em what I could do! I showed ’em! And—and—” he halted again. “Oh, God! What are you going to do with me?”
No one offered any suggestion. He ranged sideways like a doubtful dog, while across the plain the Lower Establishment murmured seductively. All eyes turned to St. Peter.
“At this moment,” the Saint said half to himself, “I can’t recall any precise ruling under which——”
“My own case?” the ever-ready Judas suggested.
“No-o! That’s making too much of it. And yet——”
“Oh, hurry up and get it over,” the man wailed, and told them all that he had done, ending with the cry that none had ever recognised his merits; neither his own narrow-minded people, his inefficient employers, nor the snobbish jumped-up officers of his battalion.
“You see,” said St. Peter at the end. “It’s sheer vanity. It isn’t even as if we had a woman to fall back upon.”
“Yet there was a woman or I’m mistaken,” said the picket with the pleasing voice who had praised John.
“Eh—what? When?” St. Peter turned swiftly on the speaker. “Who was the woman?”
“The wise woman of Tekoah,” came the smooth answer. “I remember, because that verse was the private heart of my plays—some of ’em.”