At the same time an argument on the same subject was going on between the doctor and the Colonel. “What can the children do in a sick room? Keep them away. I should never have sent for them if you had consulted me. It is bad enough to have let her see Charlie, summoned express--do you want to frighten your wife to death?” “There can be no question,” said the Colonel, “if what you tell me is true, of frightening her to death. I think, Benson, that a patient in such circumstances ought to know. She ought to be told----” “What?” the doctor said, sharply, with a harsh tone in his voice. “What? Do you need to ask? Of her state--of what is imminent--that she is going to----” Colonel Kingsward loved his wife truly, and he could not say those last words. “Yes,” said the doctor, “going to----? Well, we hope it’s to One who has called her, that knows all about it, Kingsward. Doctors are not supposed to take that view much, but I do. I’d tell her nothing of the sort. I would not agitate her either with the sight of the children or those heathenish thoughts about dying. Well, I suppose you’ll take your own way, if you think she’s in danger of damnation; but you see I don’t. I think where she’s going she’ll find more consideration and more understanding than ever she got here.” “You are all infidels--every one of you,” said Colonel Kingsward; “you would let a soul rush unprepared into the presence of--” “Her Father,” said Doctor Benson. “So I would; if he’s her Father he’ll take care of that. And if he’s only a Judge, you know, a Judge is an extraordinarily considerate person. He leaves no means untried of coming to a right decision. I would rather trust my case in the hands of the Bench than make up my own little plea any day. And, anyhow you can put it, the Supreme Judge must be better than the best Bench that ever was. Leave her alone. She’s safer with Him than either with you or me.” “It’s an argument I never would pardon--in my own case. I shudder at the thought of being plunged into eternity without the time to--to think--to--to prepare----” “But if your preparations are all seen through from the beginning? If it’s just as well known then, or better, what you are thinking, or trying to think, to make yourself ready for that event? You knew yourself, more or less, didn’t you, when you were in active service, the excuses a wretched private would make when he was hauled up, and how he would try to make the worse appear the better cause. Were you moved by that, Colonel Kingsward? Didn’t you know the man, and judge him by what you knew?” “It seems to me a very undignified argument; there’s no analogy between a wretched private and my--and my--and one of us--at the Judgment Seat.”