“Why, Jake Pumpton over on the East Road, I guess. Or Mr. Gridley, he swears so much!” “All right! Say any one of them! Now then, you know how hot the furnace fire is at the tannery in the winter? Never mind how rotten and wicked old Pumpton or Gridley are, could you shove ’em into that fire and see ’em writhe and shriek and burn?” “No!” I protested weakly. “Then you’re more kind and merciful than God. Yet you’re only human. According to the Bible, God’s worse than you. Because He would! Could you love anybody who’d shove a live man into the tannery furnace? No—of course you couldn’t! And if God does things like that, you couldn’t love Him and neither could I or any one, never mind how much you swore you could—or did! They’re lying when they say so! I’d hate and loathe a God like that—who’d even allow such a place. And I’m not afraid to say so, either. So I don’t believe there’s any hell because the kind of God who made that pretty evening star couldn’t roast folks alive any more than you or I.” “Well, that takes an awful load off my mind, to know there ain’t a hell,” I declared. “Because there’s lots of things I like about Mr. Pumpton and Mr. Gridley even if they are Lost Souls.” Suddenly Nat made a gesture of despair: “Why? Why? Why—are we sent into this world, Billy? When we weren’t asked if we wanted to come into it in the first place, why are we scared and pounded and prohibited and lambasted, day after day and year after year, made to work, or get sick, or get well, or die—and so long as we say things with our mouths—we’ll be saved, and if we’re honest and won’t say ’em, we’ll be sent to roast in everlasting fire. Why is it, Billy? Why is it?” I couldn’t answer. Of course I couldn’t answer. But I fancy that ghosts of the Pharaohs heard and echoed Nathan’s heart-cry from the night wind. Isaiah and Socrates and Napoleon listened and shook their heads sadly. The saints and the prophets sighed from the far-flung shadows and the infinite hosts of the dead were in atonement with two little boys blinking at the stars from a river scow in a New England summer night. II On another night Nathan asked: “Did you ever think about your marriage, Billy, and wonder what day it would come in the future, and where it would happen, and who the girl was to be, and just where she is and what she happens to be doing right this minute?” “Yes,” I answered. What boy—or girl—has not?”