Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/219

 "I 'm going to get at the bottom of this here Adam and Eve business!" he said to himself, with great determination, as he made his way boldly toward the study of the Reverend Ezra Sampson, and requested the privilege of a private conversation with that amazed and somewhat perturbed scholar.

"Is God a liar?" was the boy's first question, as he faced the clergyman, in the quietness of the little study.

"God, my boy, is the light and the truth," answered the man, forbearingly.

"But does God say one thing and then go and do another?" demanded Lonely, with unrelaxed severity.

The clergyman made sure that the door was well closed before their talk went any further. Into what channels it drifted only the minister of the gospel and his pagan young interlocutor ever knew, though it left the former in a strangely disturbed state of mind, while eventually adding little or nothing to the spiritual satisfaction of Lonely himself.

Ezra Sampson, in fact, on meeting old Doctor Ridley that very morning, confessed to him his perplexity and the unlooked-for