At last, after many efforts to corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone--cornerwise, as little dogs seem always to run--fleeing shamelessly toward that east where shone the tame lights of Virtue.
Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him--"the moment that will close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in hell"-- "impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence of the Lamb"-- "the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee"-- "To-night may be thy latest breath, Thy little moment here be done.
Eternal woe, the second death, Awaits the Christ-rejecting one." This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters.
He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly.

Yet so was he turned again to better things.

Gradually he began to have an inkling of a possibility that made his blood icy--a possibility that not even the spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could mitigate--namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person.
Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him.

They walked stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over him.

If They had only talked out--but they whispered--even laughing, crying and singing in whispers.