ter. "I have withstood him until now, but I can do so no longer."
"Indeed you must. He is playing with death," said Mannering.
They sought Tom's father, to find him, as Mary had said, walking up and down, with fierce joy of battle on his thin, stern face and in his shining eyes.
"Now shall the powers of Light triumph and the will of God be done!" he said to them.
He made no demur, however, when they drew him away.
"The future is mine," he declared, and grew calm. "You cannot stand between me and my duty again, Sir Walter. You have gravely erred, and this is the result of your error. But you will not err a second time."
His excitation ceased, and it was he who proposed that they should return to their forgotten meal. In the matter of the man just dead, he revealed an indifference almost callous.
"His God will justly judge him according to his deserving," he declared. "If he sinned through ignorance and false teaching, his punishment will not be heavy; if he hardened his heart against truth and rejected the faith from pride—but even then the Father of Mercy may pardon him. He has failed, even as I knew he must, and paid a terrible penalty for failure."
Sir Walter, sorely stricken, hardly heard the other. He ate a little at Mary's entreaty, then, driven by some impulse to leave his fellow-creatures and court solitude, excused himself, begged
