He ceased.  His face I saw distinctly, and it seemed to me white and terrible and proud and strangely noble.  I thought of Milton’s Satan.

“Most of that is from the Obelisk,” said the Recording Angel, finger on page.

“It is,” said the Tyrannous Man, with a faint touch of surprise.

Then suddenly God bent forward and took this man in his hand, and held him up on his palm as if to see him better.  He was just a little dark stroke in the middle of God’s palm.

“Did he do all this?” said the Lord God.

The Recording Angel flattened his book with his hand.

“In a way,” said the Recording Angel, carelessly.  Now when I looked again at the little man his face had changed in a very curious manner.  He was looking at the Recording Angel with a strange apprehension in his eyes, and one hand fluttered to his mouth.  Just the movement of a muscle or so, and all that dignity of defiance was gone.

“Read,” said the Lord God.

And the angel read, explaining very carefully and fully all the wickedness of the Wicked Man.  It was quite an intellectual treat.—­A little “daring” in places, I thought, but of course Heaven has its privileges...

VI.

Everybody was laughing.  Even the prophet of the Lord whom the Wicked Man had tortured had a smile on his face.  The Wicked Man was really such a preposterous little fellow.

“And then,” read the Recording Angel, with a smile that set us all agog, “one day, when he was a little irascible from over-eating, he—­”

“Oh, not that,” cried the Wicked Man, “nobody knew of that.

“It didn’t happen,” screamed the Wicked Man.  “I was bad—­I was really bad.  Frequently bad, but there was nothing so silly—­so absolutely silly—­”

The angel went on reading.

“O God!” cried the Wicked Man.  “Don’t let them know that!  I’ll repent!  I’ll apologise...”

The Wicked Man on God’s hand began to dance and weep.  Suddenly shame overcame him.  He made a wild rush to jump off the ball of God’s little finger, but God stopped him by a dexterous turn of the wrist.  Then he made a rush for the gap between hand and thumb, but the thumb closed.  And all the while the angel went on reading—­reading.  The Wicked Man rushed to and fro across God’s palm, and then suddenly turned about and fled up the sleeve of God.

I expected God would turn him out, but the mercy of God is infinite.

The Recording Angel paused.

“Eh?” said the Recording Angel.

“Next,” said God, and before the Recording Angel could call the name a hairy creature in filthy rags stood upon God’s palm.

VII.

“Has God got Hell up his sleeve then?” said the little man beside me.

“Is there a Hell?” I asked.

“If you notice,” he said—­he peered between the feet of the great angels—­ “there’s no particular indication of a Celestial City.”