58 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

in the grave, the question would be all the more searching
and painful.

‘“Where is Abel thy brother?”

How quickly, and almost helplessly, one sin leads
on to another! An evil thing done, requires another evil
thing at once to cover it up. A murder committed, the
next thing in order is to begin a long series of falsehoods
to cover up the tracks of blood.

“ And he said, I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

There was arrogance in this reply. The heart of Cain
was untamed. He had rushed into a vortex of crime, and
the awful results were whirling round him like waves of fire
that could not be quenched. He had sown the wind, and
now the whirlwind was gathering round him in awful fury.
Better a thousand times in this hour to be the dead and
martyred Abel than the living, tortured, Cain.

‘‘What hast thou done?” God asks; not in anger, but
in Divine pity. ‘“ What hast thou done?”

What had he done? Quenched a young life in the
morning of its hope and power, stained the fair earth with
his brother’s blood, broken his mother’s heart, furrowed and
wrinkled his father’s brow with a hopeless sorrow, clouded
all the sunny promise of his own life, and now he stands
before God with a shameless lie, and an impertinent question
on his lips. That is what he had done.

“And God said, the voice of thy brother’s blood calleth
unto me from the ground.”

And then there came the awful doom of Cain. He was
henceforth to be a homeless wanderer upon the face of the
earth. Over mountain, and crag, and feli he was to wander
homeless and friendless—a vagabond upon the face of the
earth. He was not to die; that would have been a merciful