I do not know what the preacher would say, but it is not true that Tom is lost; it is not true that God is cruel and wicked; it is not true that, while Tom's soul lives, he cannot grow good." The rigid look in the woman's face began to disappear; her hopeless belief was shaken, not through any argument, but by the mere force of the intense conviction shining in Helen's eyes.
"Oh," she said appealingly, and beginning to tremble, "are you true with me, ma'am ?" "I am true, indeed I am!" Helen answered, unconscious that her own tears fell upon Mrs.Davis's hands; the woman looked at her, and suddenly her face began to flush that painful red which comes before violent weeping.
"If you're true, if you're right, then I can be sorry.

I wouldn't let myself be sorry while I couldn't have no hope.

Oh, I can be that sorry it turns me glad!" The hardness was all gone now; she broke into a storm of tears, saying between her sobs, "Oh, I'm so glad--I'm so glad!" A long time the two women sat together, the widow still shaken by gusts of weeping, yet listening hungrily to Helen's words, and sometimes even smiling through her tears.

The hardship of loss to herself and her children was not even thought of; there was only intense relief from horrible fear; she did not even stop to pity Tom for the pain of death; coming out of that nightmare of hell, she could only rejoice.
The early sunset flashed a sudden ruddy light through the window in the front room, making a gleaming bar on the bare whitewashed wall, and startling Helen with the lateness of the hour.
"I must go now," she said, rising.

"I will come again to-morrow." Mrs.Davis rose, too, lifting her tear-stained face, with its trembling smile, towards her deliverer.