"Exercise your wits as much as you can, my boy; but there are two kinds of roads I advise you for the most part to eschew. One kind are the roads that lead to the edge of the great darkness which skirts our little patch of light on every side. The other are the roads that go in a circle, leading you round and round with much toil to the point from which you started. I do not say, never travel on these--you cannot always help it. But for the most part exercise yourself on the roads which lead somewhere. The exercise is as good, and the result better." And he was about to send us away. But Aunt Dorothy was not at all satisfied. "That Signor Galileo was a very dangerous person," she said. "He said the sun went round, and the earth stood still, which was contrary at once to common sense, the five senses, and Scripture; and if chits like Roger and me were allowed to enter on such false philosophy at our age, where should we have wandered at hers?" "Not much further, Sister Dorothy," said my Father, "if they reached the age of Methuselah. Not much further into the question, and not much nearer the answer." "I see no difficulty in the question at all," said Aunt Dorothy. "The Almighty does everything because it is His will to do it. And we can do nothing except He wills us to do it. Which answers Olive and Roger at once. All doubts are sins, and ought to be crushed at the beginning." "How would you do this, Sister Dorothy?" asked my Father; "a good many persons have tried it before and failed." "How! The simplest thing in the world," said Aunt Dorothy. "In the first place, set people to work, so that they have no time for such foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions." "A wholesome plan, which seems to be very generally pursued with regard to the whole human race," said Father. "It is mercifully provided that those who have leisure for such questions are few. But what else would you do?" "For the children there is the switch," said Aunt Dorothy. "They would be thankful enough for it when they grew wiser." "So think the Pope and Archbishop Laud," replied my Father; "and so they set up the Inquisition and the Star Chamber." "I have no fault to find with the Inquisition and the Star Chamber," said Aunt Dorothy, "if they would only punish the right people." "But sometimes we learn we have been mistaken ourselves," said Father. "How can we be sure we are absolutely right about everything?" "_I am_," said Aunt Dorothy, emphatically. "Thank Heaven I have not a doubt about anything. Heresy is worse than treason, for it is treason against God; and worse than murder, for it is the murder of immortal souls. The fault of the Pope and Archbishop Laud is that they are heretics themselves, and punish the wrong people." This was a point often reached in discussions between my Father and Aunt Dorothy, but this time it was happily closed by the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the pavement of the court before the house.