The man had a genial, childish temperament, given to woo and bind him, in a thousand simple, silly ways, into a likeness of that Love that holds the world, and that gave man no higher hero-model than a trustful, happy child. It was the birthright of this haggard wretch going down the hill, to receive quick messages from God through every voice of the world,--to understand them, as few men did, by his poet's soul,--through love, or color, or music, or keen healthy pain. Very many openings for him to know God through the mask of matter. He had shut them; being a Calvinist, and a dyspeptic, (Dyspepsia is twin-tempter with Satan, you know,) sold his God-given birthright, like Esau, for a hungry, bitter mess of man's doctrine. He came to loathe the world, the abode of sin; loathed himself, the chief of sinners; mapped out a heaven in some corner of the universe, where he and the souls of his persuasion, panting with the terror of being scarcely saved, should find refuge. The God he made out of his own bigoted and sour idea, and foisted on himself and his hearers as Jesus, would not be as merciful in the Judgment as Gaunt himself would like to be,--far from it. So He did not satisfy him. Sometimes, thinking of the pure instincts thwarted in every heart,--of the noble traits in damned souls, sent hellwards by birth or barred into temptation by society, a vision flashed before him of some scheme of the universe where all matter and mind were rising, slowly, through the ages, to eternal life. "Even so in Christ should all be made alive." All matter, all mind, rising in degrees towards the Good? made order, infused by God? And God was Love. Why not trust this Love to underlie even these social riddles, then? He thrust out the Devil's whisper, barred the elect into their narrow heaven, and tried to be content. Douglas Palmer used to say that all Gaunt needed to make him a sound Christian was education and fresh meat. Gaunt forgave it as a worldly scoff. And Palmer, just always, thought, that, if Christ was just, He would remember it was not altogether Gaunt's fault, nor that of other bigots, if they had not education nor spiritual fresh meat. Creeds are not always "good providers." The two men had a two-miles' walk before them. They talked little, as they went. Gaunt had not told the old man that he was going into the Northern army: how could he? George's dead face was between them, whenever he thought of it. Still, Scofield was suspicious as to Gaunt's politics: he never talked to him on the subject, therefore, and to-night did not tell him of his intention to go over to Blue's Gap to warn the boys, and, if they were outnumbered, to stay and take his luck with them. He nor Dode never told Gaunt a secret: the man's brain was as leaky as a sponge.