“That is hardly a question I look for from you, sir,” returned the draper, smiling all over his round face, which looked more than ever like a moon of superior intelligence. “For me, I am glad to leave it behind me in the shop.” “True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman.” “That is fact; and with me it has just taken a new shape,” said Drew, “for I have come with quite a fresh difficulty. Since I saw you last, Mr. Polwarth, a strange and very uncomfortable doubt has rushed in upon me, and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it. I have no weapons--not a single argument of the least weight. I wonder if it be a law of nature that no sooner shall a man get into a muddle with one thing, than a thousand other muddles shall come pouring in upon him, as if Muddle itself were going to swallow him up! Here am I just beginning to get a little start in honester ways, when up comes the ugly head of the said doubt, swelling itself more and more to look like a fact--namely, that after this world there is nothing for us--nothing at all to be had anyhow--that as we came so we go--into life, out of life--that, having been nothing before, we shall be nothing after! The flowers come back in the spring, and the corn in the autumn, but they ain’t the same flowers or the same corn. They’re just as different as the new generations of men.” “There’s no pretence that we come back either. We only think we don’t go into the ground, but away somewhere else.” “You can’t prove that.” “No.” “And you don’t know anything about it!” “Not much--but enough, I think.” “Why, even those that profess to believe it, scoff at the idea of an apparition--a ghost!” “That’s the fault of the ghosts, I suspect--or their reporters. I don’t care about them myself. I prefer the tale of one who, they say, rose again, and brought his body with him.” “Yes; but he was only one!” “Except two or three whom, they say, he brought to life.” “Still there are but three or four.” “To tell you the truth, I do not care much to argue the point with you.--It is by no means a matter of the FIRST importance whether we live for ever or not.” “Mr. Polwarth!” exclaimed the draper in such astonishment mingled with horror, as proved he was not in immediate danger of becoming an advocate of the doctrine of extinction. The gate-keeper smiled what, but for a peculiar expression of undefinable good in it, might have been called a knowing smile.