“Are you sure, Mother, about Blazes?” said the boy, with a child’s passion for absolutism. “Yes, of course—but now let us get on.” The mother, from long experience, feared a pitfall. “God didn’t arrange about Blazes’ ear. It was the big wildcat did that when Blazes sailed into ’im. Daddy said so,” said the boy triumphantly marshalling his secondary causes in the great line of causation. “I guess God doesn’t arrange for dogs, does He, Mother?” “Why—yes, dear.” “But are you sure, Mother, certain sure? Sure as death?” insisted the boy. “‘Sure as death?’ Where did you get that, Paul?” “Oh, that’s what Jinny says, only she says, ‘sheer as deeth,’” said the little lad, proud of the superiority of his diction over that of his old Scottish nurse. “Are you sure, Mother, about Blazes?” he persisted. “Yes, dear, I am sure. You see, Blazes had to learn that it’s dangerous to ‘sail into’ wolves—or a wildcat, was it?—and so——” “And so God arranged the wildcat for to teach him. My, that was awful clever of God. And God arranged for the wildcat to be shot, Mother, didn’t He? I guess He doesn’t like wildcats, does He? But—” the vivid face clouded over—“but, Mother, did God arrange—” the deepening note of anxiety was painfully present—“God didn’t arrange for the Bunn boys to drown in the river.” The delicate face had gone white, the lips were drawn, the grey hazel eyes staring, the voice fallen to a tremulous, passionate undertone. His little soul was passing into an eclipse of faith. “Whatsoever comes to pass.” Against the age-long creed of a God Whose Will runs as the supreme law throughout the universe of men and things, across the wreckage of empires, through seas of blood and tears, working out with serene, unswerving purpose the glory of God, this tender, loving, sensitive heart hurled itself in passionate protest. “He did not, Mother!” cried the boy, his fists clenched, his eyes ablaze, his voice vibrating in vehement and indignant rage. “He did not arrange them to go. They just went themselves, and their father told them not to. They went themselves. He did not arrange! He did not arrange!” The voice broke in its passionate championing of his God Whom he had seen up next the blue, looking down between the tree tops, with kindly face, the God Whom “he liked awful well” and Who “liked him.” Startled, acutely distressed, the mother sat gazing at the defiantly passionate face: startled to find how intense was her sympathy with that passionate protest of her little lad, distressed that she found no word wherewith to make answer. “Hello! old chap, what’s the row? What’s up here?” A tall man came round the corner of the house, a photographer’s tripod and camera over his shoulder. The boy hesitated a perceptible moment. He stood somewhat in awe of his father, but his passion swept away his fear.