He could only lift her and try to soothe her, but she did not seem to hear him until he put her baby in her arms; at the touch of its little soft face against her drawn cheek, she trembled violently, and then came the merciful relief of tears.

She did not ask the preacher again to say that her husband was not lost; she had no hope that he would tell her anything but what she already knew.
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die." She tried, poor thing, to find some comfort in the words he spoke of God's love for her; listening with a pathetic silence which wrung his heart.
When John left her, beating his way home through the blinding snow, his face was as haggard as her own.

He could not escape from the ultimate conclusion of his creed,--"He that believeth not shall be damned." Yet he loved and trusted completely.

His confidence in God's justice could not be shaken; but it was with almost a groan that he said, "O my God, my God, justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before thy face! But justice with mercy,--justice first!".