I could feel Jennie tremble on my arm, but I made no response to Mr. Hardcap.

Mr. Gear opened the door for us himself before we had time to knock.  He was perfectly calm and self-possessed.  Jennie said afterward she should not have guessed, to have seen him elsewhere, that he had even heard of Willie’s death.  But I noticed that he uttered no greeting.  He motioned us into the sitting-room without a word.

Here, on a sofa, lay, like a white statue, the form of the dear boy.  By the side of the sofa sat the mother, her eyes red and swollen with much weeping.  But the fierceness of sorrow had passed; and now she was almost as quiet as the boy whose sleep she seemed to watch; she was quite as pale.

She rose to meet us as we entered, and offered me her hand.  Jennie put her arm around the poor mother’s waist and kissed her tenderly.  But still nothing was said.

Mr. Hardcap was the first to break the silence.  “This is a solemn judgment,” said he.

Mr. Gear made no reply.

“I hope, my friend,” continued Mr. Hardcap, “that you will heed the lesson God is a teachin’ of you, and see how fearful a thing it is to have an unbeliev’n heart.  God will not suffer us to rest in our sin of unbelief.  If we lay up our treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, we must expect they will take to themselves wings and fly away.”

Mr. Hardcap’s horrible mutilation of Scripture had always impressed me in a singular manner.  But I think its ludicrous side never so affected me before.  What is it in me that makes me always appreciate most keenly the ludicrous in seasons of the greatest solemnity and distress?  The absurdity of his misapplication of the sacred text mingled horribly with a sense of the insupportable anguish I knew he was causing.  And yet I knew not how to interfere.

“I hope he was prepared,” said Mr. Hardcap.

“I hope so,” said Mr. Gear quietly.

“He was such a noble fellow,” said Jennie to the weeping mother.  She said it softly, but Mr. Hardcap’s ears caught the expression.

“Nobility, ma’am,” said he, “isn’t a savin’ grace.  It’s a nateral virtoo.  The question is, did he have the savin’ grace of faith and repentance?”

“I believe,” said Mrs. Gear, earnestly, “that Willie was a Christian, if ever there was one, Mr. Hardcap.”

“He hadn’t made no profession of religion you know, ma’am,” said Mr. Hardcap.  “And the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

Mr. Hardcap is very fond of quoting that text.  I wonder if he ever applies it to himself.

“It seems kind o’ strange now that he should be taken away so sudden like,” continued Mr. Hardcap, “without any warnin’.  And you know what the Scripture tells us.  ‘The wages of sin is death.’”

Mr. Gear could keep silence no longer.  “I wish then,” said he hoarsely, “God would pay me my wages, and let me go.”