"All right," said Tode, following her into the brightly lighted room, and plunging at once into his subject. "Look here, what did you mean the other night about hearts, and things?" "About what?" "Why, don't you know? Down there to the meeting." "Oh! Why I meant _that_; just what I said. That's the way they always talk at a prayer-meeting about Jesus, and loving him, and all that." "Was that a prayer-meeting where we was t'other night?" "Why yes, of course. Tode, have you got the letters and figures all made?" "Do you go every time?" "What, to prayer-meeting? What a funny idea. No, of course not. It stormed, you know, and we had to go in somewhere. Wasn't it an awful night?" "Who is Jesus, anyhow?" "Why, he is God. Tode, how queer you act. Why don't you ask Mr. Birge, or somebody, if you want to know such things. Mamma says he is awful." "Awful!" "Yes, awful good, you know. He's the minister down there at that chapel. Wasn't it a funny looking church? Ours don't look a bit like that. Tode, where do you go to church?" "My!" said Tode, with his old merry chuckle. "That's a queer one. _I_ don't go to church nowhere; never did." "You ought to," answered Miss Dora, with a sudden assumption of dignity. "It isn't nice not to go to church and to Sunday-school. _I_ go. Pliny doesn't, because he has the headache so much. Shall I show you my card?" And she produced from her pocket a dainty bit of pasteboard, and held it up. "There, that's our verse. The whole school learn it for next Sunday. Then we shall have a speech about it." A sudden shiver ran through Tode's frame as he read the words printed on that card: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." He knew very little about that All-seeing Eye, but it came upon him like a great shock, the picture of the eye of God reaching everywhere, beholding the _evil_. He felt afraid, and alone, and desolate. He did not know what was the matter with him, he had felt so strangely troubled and unhappy since that evening of the meeting. Almost the tears came into his eyes as he stood there beside Dora, looking down at that terrible verse. "Take it away," he said, suddenly, turning from the bit of pasteboard. "I don't want his eyes looking at me." "You can't help it," Dora answered, with great emphasis. "There are more just such verses, 'Thou God seest me;' and oh, plenty of them. And he certainly _does_ see you all the time, whether you want him to or not." "Well stop!" said Tode, with a sudden gruffness that Dora had never seen in him before. "I don't want to hear another bit about it, nor your verse, nor anything--not a word. I wish you had let me alone. I don't believe it, anyhow, nor I won't, nor I ain't a going to--so."