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business, we are occupied with sports, fiction, drama, pictures, dancing, science, philosophy, and such things."

It was noteworthy that every single item in Mr. Ditmas's list was reckoned sinful by the hill folk. This religious preoccupation had so seeped in around Belshue that the jeweller himself accounted such things, if not immoral, at least a wilful waste of time.

"Don't you Northern people believe something about eternity and a future life?" probed the jeweller out of this mental background.

The engineer glanced at him. "It is hardly ever discussed."

"What do you think about it individually?" persisted the jeweller curiously.

"I—" The engineer paused to consider what he did think about it—"Well, I think we persist after death through our children."

The jeweller stared at him. "That isn't us."

"In a way it is. Our children were once part of us. Then the Old Testament suggests it. It says no man who is emasculated shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Belshue was surprised. "I didn't know that."

"It does. You see, the Jews had an idea there was a close connection between reproduction and salvation. Of course, our modern life has broken up that feeling of solidarity in a family which permitted a man genuinely to feel that he was living on in his descendants. The American family is a far more casual assembly of individuals than was the old Hebrew family."

"But the Bible speaks of Heaven and eternal life," persisted the jeweller.

"That's true, but have you never observed that every religious injunction points directly toward the welfare of the young? Take the basic ten commandments. 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' Why did Moses pick out the specific sin, adultery, whereas fornication is treated as a much lesser evil? There is no spiritual difference between the two.