Then his eyes paced the room, walking along the shelves, reading the names of books: lawbooks, philosophies, fiction, poetry—all of them records of the vanity of human efforts to conquer the storms that swept spirit and flesh. Every title was a monument of defeat. To escape these reminders, his eyes went longingly to the window where they could release their vision like the raven set free upon the flooded world. He rose and leaned upon the casement and stared into the sky, and saw nothing but blue emptiness, the infinite idle azure, soulless, sorrowless, loveless, hateless, deaf, dumb, indifferent, without shame or mercy, morals or duties; the inverted ocean of the heavens, the topless pit where souls went hurtling when the earth flung them into its depths to drown in eternity, to emerge upon some inconceivable shore and crawl forward to the feet of judgment for everlasting doom or everlasting bliss. It was said that Eyes looked down from there and saw the sparrow fall, saw the least quirk of a finger, saw through the brain and watched the darkest thoughts that stole like thieves through the night of a mind. Yet the sparrow fell, or went soaring away in the claws of the hawk; the little children died or lived to be trodden and gored and seared and crazed with fright. And the child’s cry for help was as unheard or unheeded as the sparrow’s. Rebellious thoughts stirred RoBards to mutiny. He was ready to defy heaven and denounce its indifferent tyranny, as Lucifer had done and the other angels. Better to be thrust over the jasper walls and to fall for seven days into hell than not to protest. And then he was himself put to the test of an appeal for his mercy. He heard a voice below him and glanced forth from his window as from a little heaven to a petitioner on earth. “Please, sir, could I have a word with you, if you please, sir.” As he looked down and with a kind of divinity understood beforehand just who was praying and what the prayer would be and that it would not be granted, he felt that God must find it hard at times to look into some of the wrinkled old faces that are upturned in desperate appeal, like shriveled flowers praying for rain. “I’m Mrs. Lasher, sir, of down the road a bit. You’re always passin’ our house. It’s not much to see and I’ve not had luck with my children, for all they’re so many; but to-day I—would you—could you spare me a minute of your precious time, sir—could you?” He was afraid to ask her in or to encourage her at all; for he dreaded his own weakness. He sat on the window sill and, abstaining from any temptation to courtesy, said: “Go on.” She took complete discouragement from his manner, and went into a panic, pursing her lips and doddering and mixing her fingers together in a silly restlessness as she spoke: “It’s about my son, Jud, sir. He says he’s goin’ to sea for a sailor.” “Why?” “His only reason is because you gave him the advice to go.” “Well, why not?”