There was a silence. Fernando seemed to be thinking; Lance gazed from one to the other, as if disappointed that his brother was not more explicit.
'And how do you know it is true?' added Fernando. 'I mean, what Lance has been telling me! What makes you sure of it, if you are?'
'_If_ I am?' cried Felix, startled into indignation. 'To be sure I am!'
'Ay; so you have said for ever,' broke in Fernando; 'but what authenticates that?'
'The whole course of history,' said Felix. 'There is a great chain of evidence, I know, but I never got it up. I can't tell it you, Fernando; I never wanted it, never even tried to think about the proofs. It is all too sure.'
'But wouldn't a Mahometan say that?' said Fernando.
'If he did, look at the Life of our Lord and of Mahomet together, and see which must be the true Prophet--the Way, the Life, the Truth.'
'That one could do,' said Fernando thoughtfully. 'I say,' as Felix made a movement as if he thought the subject concluded, 'I want to know one thing more. Lance says it is believing all this that makes you--any one I mean--good.'
'I don't know what else should,' said Felix, smiling a little; the question seemed to him so absurd.
'Is it really what makes you go and slave away at that old boss's of yours?'
'Why, that's necessity and my duty,' said Felix.
'And is it what makes this little coon come and spend all his play-hours on a poor fellow with a broken leg? I've been at many schools, and never saw the fellow who would do that.'
'All that is right comes from God first and last,' said Felix gravely.
'And you--you that are no child--you believe all that Lance tells me you do, and think it makes you what you are!'
'I believe it; yes, of course. And believing it should make me much better than I am! I hope it will in time.'
'Ah!' sighed Fernando. 'I never heard anything like it since my father said he'd take the cow-hide to poor old Diego, if he caught him teaching me nigger-cant.'
'Poor fellow!' sighed Felix; 'what have you been telling him, Lance?'
'Oh, I don't know; only why things were good and bad,' was Lance's lucid answer; and he was then intent on detailing the stories he had heard from Fernando. He had been in the worst days of Southern slavery ere its extinction, on the skirts of the deadly warfare with the Red Indians; and the poor lad had really known of horrors that curdled the blood of Wilmet and Geraldine, and made the latter lie awake or dream dreadful dreams all night.