"
"You mistake me, sir. How can I imagine there is no hell, when
_he_ said there was?"
"Who's _he_?"
"The man who knows all about it, and means to put a stop to it
some day."
"Oh, yes; I see! Hm!--But I don't for the life of me see what a
fellow is to make of it all--don't you know? Those parsons! They
will have it there's no way out of it but theirs, and I never
could see a handle anywhere to that door!"
"_I_ don't see what the parsons have got to do with it, or,
at least, what you have got to do with the parsons. If a thing is
true, you have as much to do with it as any parson in England; if
it is not true, neither you nor they have anything to do with
it."
"But, I tell you, if it be all as true as--as--that we are all
sinners, I don't know what to do with it!"
"It seems to me a simple thing. _That_ man as much as said
he knew all about it, and came to find men that were lost, and
take them home."
"He can't well find one more lost than I am! But how am I to
believe it? How can it be true? It's ages since he was here, if
ever he was at all, and there hasn't been a sign of him ever
since, all the time!"
"There you may be quite wrong. I think I could find you some who
believe him just as near them now as ever he was to his own
brothers--believe that he hears them when they speak to him, and
heeds what they say."
"That's bosh.
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