“I neither love nor hate any man for that which he is called,” said the stranger; “the name boots nothing.” The stranger sat down again beside the fire, and folded his hands. “Is the Chartered Company Christian also?” he asked. “Yes, oh yes,” said Peter. “What is a Christian?” asked the stranger. “Well, now, you really do ask such curious questions. A Christian is a man who believes in Heaven and Hell, and God and the Bible, and in Jesus Christ, that he’ll save him from going to Hell, and if he believes he’ll be saved, he will be saved.” “But here, in this world, what is a Christian?” “Why,” said Peter, “I’m a Christian--we’re all Christians.” The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the subject. “It’s curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways. She was always saying to me, ‘Don’t be too anxious to make money, Peter. Too much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.’ You’re very like her.” After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger, “If you don’t want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No one comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?” “I am not more with one people than with another,” said the stranger. “The Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard,” said the stranger, “the black infant cry as it crept on its mother’s body and sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man’s child wail in the palace. I hear all cries.” Peter looked intently at him. “Why, who are you?” he said; then, bending nearer to the stranger and looking up, he added, “What is it that you are doing here?” “I belong,” said the stranger, “to the strongest company on earth.” “Oh,” said Peter, sitting up, the look of wonder passing from his face. “So that’s it, is it? Is it diamonds, or gold, or lands?” “We are the most vast of all companies on the earth,” said the stranger; “and we are always growing. We have among us men of every race and from every land; the Esquimo, the Chinaman, the Turk, and the Englishman, we have of them all. We have men of every religion, Buddhists, Mahomedans, Confucians, Freethinkers, Atheists, Christians, Jews. It matters to us nothing by what name the man is named, so he be one of us.” And Peter said, “It must be hard for you all to understand one another, if you are of so many different kinds?” The stranger answered, “There is a sign by which we all know one another, and by which all the world may know us.” (By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.) And Peter said, “What is that sign?” But the stranger was silent. “Oh, a kind of freemasonry!” said Peter, leaning on his elbow towards the stranger, and looking up at him from under his pointed cap. “Are there any more of you here in this country?”