CHAPTER XX

A

BARNABY AND CRAIG

FTER supper Simeon Craig joined Barnaby where he was strolling in the warm twilight, reënjoying the afternoon memory painted. Excepting at the short meals, and sometimes at their morning plunge in the river, they had of late seen little of each other. Barnaby did not feel himself increasingly attracted toward the brand of Christian development of which Craig was the consistent exemplar, but did find himself attracted much in the direction of the farm among the hills, whither Craig's ways seldom held.

"So you 're going," was Craig's beginning. "I don't know why you ever came; but I do know you've got nothing of good by coming, whatever your chances. might have been."

Barnaby laughed over his different judgment of this matter, and made answer:

"If I had n't been here when you had that discussion with Ashgrave, there might have been a vacancy in the Padanaram pulpit."

Craig, with his fearful literalness, accepted this as a veritable measure, on Barnaby's part, of the result of his visit.

"I don't think," he returned; "that my life or death is of the slightest importance. It's your eternal welfare that I was considering."

"Really," returned Barnaby, who for the life of him could not keep in control the joy that was beating in

warm blood through his veins; "that has n't troubled me in the slightest."

"If it had," said Craig, "I might have hoped something from your visit. As it is, I think it's been useless." "Well," replied Barnaby, touched by the sincerity of his companion; "it's awfully good of you to care for my salvation

"I don't care for it, that is, not as to your individual soul. It's of no more importance than any other soul, nor of any less."

"Thank you, all the same," laughed Barnaby. "Aren't there some here, to the manor born, that need saving?"

"But your own soul!" cried Craig. "To you it is all to you it means everything!"

Barnaby took the length of the drive and return before he answered, in evidence of the thoughtfulness of his silence:

"No, I don't think I feel that. I think God put me into the world for something more than merely to save my soul."

"More!" exclaimed Craig. "What can there be more."

"Well, if you had blood in your body, instead of diluted water," retorted Barnaby, "you 'd know there's love; to make a woman happy and be made happy by her

"Passion, you mean," interrupted Craig. "You share it with the cattle of the pasture."

"Come," said Barnaby sternly, "either we don't speak the same language, or its words have different meanings to us. In any event, it 's risky for us to continue to use it to each other."

"Who art thou, oh man, that repliest against God?

Reproof is from the Lord, and only the foolhardy is it who passes on and is punished."

Barnaby had already resumed his good humour, in token of his memory of the day.

"All right," he said, "but I 'm not worrying just now over the hereafter. The here 's good enough for me.' ""Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!'

Barnaby was far from able to free himself from the peculiar superstition which is the inheritance of the New Englander, and this declaration by Craig disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge, even to himself. Such predictions, uttered with no more apparent basis than this, had been fulfilled in days past, and there was no reason why they might not be again. Nay, it was at just such times as these, when the soul has said to itself, “eat, drink and be merry," that the blow was wont to fall. He had read of them in innumerable Sundayschool books, and it stood to reason that so many writers would n't have told the same story, if there had been no foundation for it. He saw now, since the clergyman had spoken, that it was just what he had been fearing, ever since he realised that he had much in the way of happiness to lose.

"Is one to make no plans for the future, simply because he may die before they mature?" he demanded bitterly and, withal, uneasily.

"Lay up treasure where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also. As to all else, take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself."

"Look here," said Barnaby, suddenly; "we 're put into this world for something. We're given desires and

appetites; we find pleasure in one thing and pain in another; we we we learn to love a woman and want to do for her because we love her. Do you mean to tell me that all this, that God makes us want to do, is contrary to God and He 's going to damn us for it?"

"Be certain first that God does make you want to do a thing," said Craig sternly. "It's as likely the devil as God. Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God."

"But how are you going to try them, if not by their fruits? If that which makes for love, which builds the home, makes you care for another because it is a greater joy for you than to care for yourself, makes you want to live decently and honestly, because it would pain another for you to do otherwise — if these things are not of God, then pray what is?"

"Alas, alas; the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and by covering passion with this pretence of love, telling you that you do these things for another, when you do them because of carnal passion and the desire for self-gratification

"Shut up!" exclaimed Barnaby, "you 're uttering blasphemy! God gave two commandments and both of them are love!"

He was ashamed of himself as soon as he had spoken, for after all the man was a clergyman and entitled to respect as the minister of God. He pushed the dirt and gravel a moment with his foot, and then looking up, with a manly air of regret said:

"Forgive me; I did not mean to speak like that."

"There is one from whom cometh forgiveness, even God," said Craig solemnly. "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord; if, therefore, ye can speak evil of God, how much less will ye say of his servant?"

"But I'm not speaking evil of God," protested poor Barnaby. "He's given me love and a desire to be a good, clean man and to make myself worthy of love. Is that speaking evil of Him?"

"It is speaking evil to confound your passions and His commands, to accept a thing as good and from Him, because your unregenerate nature wishes it. Unless you do what you do with eye single to His glory, not because you wish it, but because He commands it, it makes no difference whether you do good or evil; nay, there are those who hold, and with apparent authority, that the more meritorious the work in itself, the greater will be your damnation, in that it can have no true source, but must spring from your vain glory and pride." Barnaby turned upon the speaker.

"And it's on such a basis as this," he said in angry indignation; "that you expect to build character and attain heaven? I wish you joy of it! If it does n't prove a hell, you 're made of something else than flesh. and blood."

"Anathema-Maranatha!" cried the affrighted clergyman, who, if his inheritance had been other, would have sheltered himself under the Sign of the Cross.

Barnaby slipped away into the darkness of the highway and strode toward the Seagrave farm. It would be a rest to his wearied spirit even to see the house that sheltered his love. When he came in sight of it, standing huge and dark against the starlit splendour of the sky, a great joy stole over him, and he was foolish enough to think that here was a veritable message from the great heart of the universe, that, because of his love for this girl, he had drawn one step nearer than before to the source of love. So he came back to his simple chamber for a last night's rest, a night deeper and more meaningful