I found him busy, as usual, for he was one of the most diligent men I have ever known.  But his face was gloomy, and I thought or fancied that the old scorn had begun once more to usurp the expression of it.  Young Tom was not in the shop.

“It is a long time since I saw you, now, Thomas.”

“I can hardly wonder at that,” he returned, as if he were trying to do me justice; but his eyes dropped, and he resumed his work, and said no more.  I thought it better to make no reference to the past even by assuring him that it was not from resentment that I had been a stranger.

“How is Tom?” I asked.

“Well enough,” he returned.  Then, with a smile of peevishness not unmingled with contempt, he added:  “He’s getting too uppish for me.  I don’t think the Latin agrees with him.”

I could not help suspecting at once how the matter stood—­namely, that the father, unhappy in his conduct to his daughter, and unable to make up his mind to do right with regard to her, had been behaving captiously and unjustly to his son, and so had rendered himself more miserable than ever.

“Perhaps he finds it too much for him without me,” I said, evasively; “but I called to-day partly to inform him that I am quite ready now to recommence our readings together; after which I hope you will find the Latin agree with him better.”

“I wish you would let him alone, sir—­I mean, take no more trouble about him.  You see I can’t do as you want me; I wasn’t made to go another man’s way; and so it’s very hard—­more than I can bear—­to be under so much obligation to you.”

“But you mistake me altogether, Thomas.  It is for the lad’s own sake that I want to go on reading with him.  And you won’t interfere between him and any use I can be of to him.  I assure you, to have you go my way instead of your own is the last thing I could wish, though I confess I do wish very much that you would choose the right way for your own way.”

He made me no answer, but maintained a sullen silence.

“Thomas,” I said at length, “I had thought you were breaking every bond of Satan that withheld you from entering into the kingdom of heaven; but I fear he has strengthened his bands and holds you now as much a captive as ever.  So it is not even your own way you are walking in, but his.”

“It’s no use your trying to frighten me.  I don’t believe in the devil.”

“It is God I want you to believe in.  And I am not going to dispute with you now about whether there is a devil or not.  In a matter of life and death we have no time for settling every disputed point.”

“Life or death!  What do you mean?”

“I mean that whether you believe there is a devil or not, you know there is an evil power in your mind dragging you down.  I am not speaking in generals; I mean now, and you know as to what I mean it.  And if you yield to it, that evil power, whatever may be your theory about it, will drag you down to death.  It is a matter of life or death, I repeat, not of theory about the devil.”