"No, he loves them you see. Do you suppose if my Winny and my boys should go wrong, and not mind a word I say, I could give 'em up and say, 'Let them go then?' No indeed! I'd stick to 'em till the very last minute, and I'd coax 'em, and pray over 'em day and night--and _my love_, why it's _just_ nothing by the side of his. Why he says himself that his love is greater than the love of a woman; so you see he sticks to 'em all, and wants every one of them." Tode resolved this thought in his mind for a little, then gave vent to his new idea. "Then I should think folks ought to be coaxing 'em, folks that love _him_, I mean. If he loves all the people and wants them, and is trying to get them, why then I should think all his folks ought to be trying, too." "That's it!" said the old lady, eagerly. "That's it exactly. He tells us so in the Bible time and time again. 'Let him that heareth say come.' Now you and me have heard, and according to that it's our business to go right to work, and say 'come' the very first time we get a chance. But, deary me! I do believe in my heart that's half the trouble, folks won't do it; his own folks, too, that have heard, and have got one of the mansions waiting for 'em. He's given them all work to do helping to fill the others, and half the time they let it go, and tend to their own work, and leave him to do the coaxing all alone." "Mother," interrupted Winny, impatiently drumming on the corner of the Bible, "I thought you said it was bedtime. I could have learned two grammar lessons in this time." The mother gave a gentle little sigh. "Well, deary, so it is," she said. "We'll just have a word of prayer, and then we'll go." Tode in his little room took his favorite position, a seat on the side of the bed, and lost himself in thought. Great strides the boy had taken in knowledge since tea time. Wonderful truths had been revealed to him. Some faint idea of the wickedness of this world began to dawn upon him. All his life hitherto had been spent in the depths, and it would seem that if he were acquainted with anything it must be with wickedness, yet a new revelation of it had come to him. "Ye _will_ not come unto me, that ye might have life." He did not know that there was such a verse in the Bible; but now he knew the fact, and it gave this boy, who had come out of a cellar rum-hole, and had mingled during his entire life with just such people as swarm around cellar rum-holes, a more distinct idea of the total depravity of this world than he had ever dreamed of before. It gave him a solemn old feeling. He felt less like whistling and more like going very eagerly to work than he ever had before.