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None the less, when her turn came, it was agreed that she had been marvellously blessed and was a blessing to them all. "She'll be a sure sweet comfort to you, Brother Spray. She's lik a young tree planted in the pläace of one that's gone."

Her father sat hunched among the swarm of his children, and his face was still pale and sweaty, though now he was in other ways himself again, sober and sound and hard at work.

"If only the liddle child had lived to pass through the Gëate of the Brethren. Another half-hour would have done it."

"Täake comfort, Brother. If the child couldn't come through 'twas that the Lord hadn't need of it."

Adam Spray appeared to find this comfort somewhat cold, but he did not argue, for the issues were involved, the theological being twisted with the material in a pattern that was not always clear. If the child had lived to be born it might have lived to grow up, and then there would have been another mouth to feed, another body to clothe—now when times were so bad that the Brethren could hardly spare bread to break at their meeting. . . . The Lord had perhaps been merciful in shutting the gate. Though what had He shut outside?—a human soul, doomed to darkness and torment, or just a little dream? . . . It made his head ache to wonder so much, and he clasped it with his hands.