“For, peradventure, thou may’st before God Almighty My reckoning help to clean and purify; For it is said ever among That money maketh all right that is wrong.” “Nay, Everyman, I sing another song; I follow no man in such voyages,” declared _Goods_; and, when Everyman spoke to him indignantly, “What, weenest [imaginest] thou that I am thine?” he exclaimed. “I had wend [imagined] so,” stammered Everyman. “Nay, Everyman; I say no!” returned Goods; and went on to assure him that _Goods_ were only lent, and that they generally killed a man’s soul. Then, in his great despair, Everyman cursed the cruel spirit, who only laughed mockingly, refused to follow him out of this world, and before Everyman could speak again drew close the curtains of his shrine. Once more he strove to think of some help, and, at last, he recalled _Good Deeds_, only to remember that she was so weak that she could “neither go nor speak.” “Yet will I venture on her now,” he told himself. “My _Good Deeds_, where be you?” Again, at the other end of the stage, a recess opened, and there, lying on the ground, so feeble and starved that she could scarcely move, was a beautiful woman dressed in a long white robe embroidered with stars. “Here I lie cold in the ground (she said faintly). Thy sins hath me sore bound, That I cannot stir.” Very humbly Everyman approached her, for he knew that it was through his fault that she was so weak and ill. He had neglected and scorned her, but now she seemed his only hope, and so he implored her to take the journey with him. “I would full fain, but I cannot stand verily,” she declared. And then she showed him how his “book of accounts,” in which his good deeds should have been numbered, was almost empty, and the pages were so blurred and the letters so confused that Everyman could not decipher them. He was almost beside himself with grief and fear, when Good Deeds advised him to seek counsel of her sister, who was called _Knowledge_, for she possibly might help him “to make that dreadful reckoning.” So Everyman stood before her shrine, and, when the curtains parted, he saw that Knowledge was grave, and beautiful, and kind. To his great joy she promised to be his guide; but before all things she told him he must first seek _Confession_, who would cleanse him from his sins. So Knowledge brought him to Confession, a stately figure in a monk’s cowl. Confession stepped from his shrine to counsel and instruct poor Everyman, who confessed his sins, and begged that Good Deeds might be strengthened. Kneeling before Confession, he prayed earnestly to God, and presently Good Deeds stood at his side. “I thank God, now I can walk and go; And am delivered of my sickness and woe (she said). Therefore with Everyman I will go, and not spare. His good works I will help him to declare.”