Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/201

 black marks after hundreds and hundreds of names. In so doing. Lonely solemnly believed, they recorded every single sin committed on earth. At his own name, he always thought, the sterner of the two angels often shook a despondent head, for the line of dots, he knew, was almost endless, being carried grimly on from page to page and threatening some day to invade even the inside of the back cover. There was hothing grotesque in the image to the boy; on many occasions, in fact, the vision of the implacable angel with the goose-quill pen had served to keep him to the straight and narrow path of rectitude. He could not explain, however, whether it was from teaching, hearsay, or picture-books that his conception of this Judgment Seat had first arisen.

So, in his moment of peril, it flashed through him that his line of black marks was a hopelessly long one, being carried countlessly on, unlike all others, from one big pageful to another; and with a second and deeper pang of terror he realized that he was not fit to die. His black young life had been fairly stippled with mendacity; and liars, it had been written, shall inherit Hell.