You be the justest man ever I seed
or heard tell on out the Scriptures. An' I wants 'e to gimme your opinion
like. S'pose you was the Judge an' I comed afore 'e an' the Books was theer
and you'd read 'em an' had to conclude 'pon 'em--?"
The fisherman reflected. Vallack's proposition did not strike him as
particularly grotesque. He felt it was a natural question, and he only
regretted that it had been put, because, though he had driven more than one
young man to righteousness along the path of terror, in this present case
the truth came too late save to add another horror to death. He believed in
all sincerity that as surely as the young man before him presently died, so
surely would he be damned, but he saw no particular object in stating the
fact. Such intelligence might tell upon Vallack's physical condition--a
thing of all others to be avoided, for Gray Michael held that the
sufferer's only chance of a happy eternity was increased and lengthened
opportunity in time.
"It ed'n for me to sit in the Judgment Seat, Albert. 'Vengeance is mine,
sayeth the Lard.' You must allus hold in mind that theer's mighty few saved
alive, best o' times. Many be called, but few chosen. Men go down to the
graave every second o' the day an' night, but if you could see the sawls a
streamin' away, thicker'n a cloud of starlings, you'd find a mass, black as
a storm, went down long, an' awnly just a summer cloud like o' the blessed
riz up.
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