entering into the secret places of the souls, and pleading with each man
to his face. And the little Pilgrim looked on with pitying and tender
eyes, and it seemed to her that the heart of the judge, before whom that
great question was debated, leaned mostly to the right, and acknowledged
that the way of the Lord was the best way; but either that sleep
overpowered him and weariness, or the other voices deafened his ears, or
something betrayed him that he forgot the reasons of the wise and the
judgment of his own soul. At first it comforted her to see how something
nobler in every man would answer to the pleadings; and then her heart
failed her, to perceive that notwithstanding this the judge would leave
his seat without a decision, and all would end in vanity. 'And oh,
friend,' she cried, 'what shall be done to those who see and yet
refuse?'--her heart being wrung by the disappointment and the failure.
But her companion smiled still, and he said, 'They are the children of
the Father. Can a woman forget her child that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb? She may forget; yet will not He
forget.' And thus they went on and on.

But time would not suffice to tell what these two pilgrims saw as they
wandered among the ways of men. They saw poverty and misery and pain,
which came of the evil which man had done upon the earth, and were his
punishment, and could be cured by nothing but by the return of each to
his Father, and the giving up of all self-worship and self-seeking and
sin. But amid all the confusion and among those who had fallen the lowest
they found not one who was forsaken, whose name the Father had forgotten,
or who was not made to pause in his appointed moment, and to sit upon his
throne and hear the pleadings before him of the great advocates of God,
reasoning of temperance and righteousness and judgment to come.

But once before they returned to their home, a great thing befell them;