These latter, however, do not produce any bright immediate blossom, though they ultimately change the face of all that spot of earth by the spread of their roots and branches.
After praying a long time Bart Toyner relapsed into meditation, endeavouring to contemplate those attributes of his God which might bring him the strength which he had not yet attained, and just here came to him the subtlest and strongest reinforcement to all those arguments which were chiming together upon what appeared to him the side of evil.
The God in whom he had learned to trust was a God who, moved by pity, had come out of His natural path to give a chance of salvation to wicked men by the sacrifice of Himself.

To what did he owe his own rescue but to this special adjustment of law made by God?
and how then was it right for him to adhere to the course the regular law imposed on him and to hunt down Markham?
If he saved Markham, he would answer to the law for his own breach of duty--this would be at least some sacrifice.

Was not this course a more God-like one?
There was one part of Toyner that spoke out clearly and said that his duty was exactly what he had esteemed it to be before Ann Markham appealed to him.

He believed this part of him to be his conscience.
All the rest of him slowly veered round to thoughts of mercy rather than legal duty; he thought of Ann and Christa with hard, godless hearts, surrounded by every form of folly and sin, and he believed that Ann would keep her promise to him, and that different surroundings would give them different souls.

Yet he felt convinced that God and conscience forbade this act of mercy.
One thing he was as certain of now as he had been at the beginning--that if he disobeyed God, God would leave him to the power of all his evil appetites; he felt already that his heart gave out thoughts of affection to his old evil life.
As the hours passed he began to realise that he would need to disobey God.