He threw out his arms with a gesture of such frenzied entreaty, and his whole figure was so transformed by the earnestness, and passion, and pathos, and even anguish with which he pressed his theme, that at least the spectators were cut to the heart. "I know not," he cried, "whether you are dead or living, or whether I myself am mad or sane--for, indeed, to me of late the world has seemed all upside down. But this I know, that I see you and that you see me, and if, as I suppose, you come from communion with the Eternal, you must know that, in that Presence, there is mercy for the lowest--for the chief of sinners! There is mercy, Tom, I know that there is mercy! Therefore I entreat you to consider, Tom, the case of this woman--of she who was your wife, the mother of your child. She has paid dearly for her offence against you--paid for it every moment of every hour of every day of every year since she offended. Since then she has been continually paying. Is not a quittance nearly due--from you, Tom? If blood is needed to wash out her guilt, she has wept tears of blood. If suffering--look at her and see how she has suffered. And now, even as I stand and speak to you, she dies. She bears her burden to the grave. Is she to add to it, still, the weight of your resentment? That will be the heaviest weight of all. Beneath it, how shall she stagger to the footstool of her God? All these years she has lived in hell. Don't--with your hand, Tom!--now she's dying, thrust her into hell, for ever. But put her hand in yours, and bear her up, and stay her, Tom, and lead her to the throne of God. If she can say that you've forgiven her, God will forgive her too. And then she'll find her baby, Tom." It was a strange farrago of words which Ballingall had strung together, but the occasion was a strange one too. His earnestness, in which all was forgotten save his desire to effect his purpose, seemed to cast about them a halo as of sanctity. It was almost as if he stood there, pleading for a sinner, in the very Name of Christ--the great Pleader for all great sinners. The woman, this latest Magdalene, did as that first Magdalene had done, she fell on her knees and wept--tears of bitterness. "Tom! Tom!" she cried, "Tom! Tom!" But he to whom she cried did not do as the Christ, the Impersonation of Divine Mercy, did. Christ wept with the sinners. He to whom she pleaded laughed at her. And, beneath his laughter, she crouched lower and lower, till she lay almost prostrate on the floor; and her body quivered as if he struck her with a whip. Ballingall, as if he could scarcely credit the evidence of his own senses, started back and stared, as though divided between amazement and dismay. Under his breath, he put a singular inquiry--the words seeming to be wrung from him against his will. "Tom!--Are you a devil?"