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. You said that punishment would come to them. I wanted to believe that a long time, but I never could, and I shouldn't now, only you seemed so certain about it."

"Elisabeth," said Hepworth, "why didn't you believe it? Your ideas are new to me—I never met with them."

Elisabeth looked at him with an air of doubtfulness.

"Perhaps, sir," she answered, with evident simplicity, "you don't know much of the world?"

"I am a man of middle age," he said.

She shook her head and smiled.

"I don't think that's got much to do with it, sir. It all depends, doesn't it, on how much a person's seen of life?"

"Have you seen so much that you know these things better than I do?" he enquired.

"Oh no, sir; I don't say that. I only say that from what I've seen during my life I've never been able to see that all you preached yesterday is true."