“Always!” the old man answered solemnly. “I never was mistaken in my life, whether I went for or against it, and I've done both.”
The woman drew a hapless sigh. “Yes, I reckon it's so.”
Braile was putting out his stick to help himself in rising, after the silence she let follow. She came from it, and reached a staying hand toward him. “And supposin'—supposin'—there was a woman—that there was a woman, and her husband left her, and he kept away years and years, till she thought he was dead, and she married somebody else, and then he come back, would it be a sin for her to keep on with the other one when she knowed the first one was alive?”
“I reckon that's what would be called a sin, Nancy. Not that I'd be very quick to condemn her—”
“And supposin' that the first one hadn't claimed her yet, and she'd made the other one leave her, and then the first one come and wanted her to join him in the wickedest thing that ever was, and she wasn't as strong as she had been, and she felt to need the protection-like of the other one: would it be a sin for her to take him back?”
Braile made again as if to rise. “I reckon you'd better talk to Mis' Braile about a thing like that. You see, a man—”
She stayed him again with a beseeching gesture.
“Squire Braile, do you believe that God is good?”
“Ah, now, I'm more at home in a question like that. You might say that if He lets evil prevail, it's either because He can't help it, or because He don't care, or even because He thinks it's best for mankind to let them have their swing when they choose to do evil. I incline to think that's my idea. He's made man, we'll say, made him in His own image, and He's put him here in a world of his own, to do the best or the worst with it. The way I look at it, He doesn't want to keep interfering with man, but lets him play the fool or play the devil just as he's a mind to. But every now and then He sends him word. If we're going to take what the Book says, He sent him Word made flesh, once, and I reckon He sends him Word made Spirit whenever there's a human creature comes into the world, all loving and all unselfish—like your Joey, or—my—my Jimmy—”
The old man's voice died in his throat, and the woman laid her hand on his knee. He trembled to his feet, now. “When I think of such Spirits coming into this world, I'm not afraid of all the devils out of hell Dylksing round.”