“Yes; and, you see, I am a common murderer as well as all the other dreadful things. And I let that baby die, too, rather than go and help the woman wash it outside and in, as you made me do. That is two murders; and I’m another one for not knowing how to fill it up with hot water and poke my finger down its throat and press the potatoes and water up at the same time. I’m a woman, or I ought to be. It’s my life business to know and perform ably such terrible and simple operations on babies. That makes me three murderers. And how did I know that Bill wouldn’t kill you at the same time you killed him, and Mr. Stivers and--” “Stop!” Gabriel exclaimed suddenly, and he was shaking so hard with unseemly mirth that he shook me, too; for without being able to help myself, I had been crowding closer and closer to him, until I was burrowing right under his arm in the agonies of confession. “The damages will be endless if you go on at this rate. How many of these murders did you realize you were doing at the time you did ’em?” “Only Bill,” I answered, after a few minutes of intense mental suffering. “I knew I ought to go and sympathize with the mother of the baby, but I didn’t know about that squeezing a baby’s stomach in the right place; but, as I say, I ought to have known, and--I did throw the quilt back to start to Mrs. Stivers when you came in. Please don’t laugh!” “Then you stand acquitted of all responsibility of faulty impulse except about the murder of Bill, which didn’t come off,” Gabriel answered in a gentle, serious, and respectful voice that soothed me into a cheerful frame of mind over my crimes even before he had more than half uttered the words. I felt hope for myself rise in my heart. “And then--then you came to the door and began to sing ‘Stand up for Jesus!’ so that eyes in my soul opened suddenly, and I saw Him standing and looking pitifully down into my awful black heart, and I felt Him reach out His hand to me in the darkness. I’ve always avoided and been afraid of God before, but now do you think He feels about me as He did the man on the other cross who had done awful things, I forget just what, and as long as Bill and the baby are both alive, and I worked so hard, He will forgive me and love me? And give me more awful work to do? Tell me, and what you say I will believe.” I crouched at his knee as I asked the question breathlessly.