"Why do you weep?" asked Gud, "since most of these dead ones will go to
Hell anyway."
The man did not answer but kept on weeping. So Gud paused to read the
epitaph on the tombstone of the grave on which the man was sitting. The
inscription was: "IN THIS GRAVE LIE THE DAMNED SOULS OF UNBAPTIZED
BABES."
"Come," said Gud, shaking the weeping man by the shoulder. "If your
child wasn't baptized it ought to be damned, but there is no use weeping
about it."
"I never had a child," said the man, "but if I were going to have one, I
would take no chances, for I would call the priest before I sent for the
doctor."
"Then why are you weeping?" repeated Gud.
"Not over the contents of this grave, I assure you, but because of the
contents of that grave there by the creek's edge."
"Is a relative of yours buried there?" asked Gud.
"He was no relative of mine," said the man. "And yet I am weeping
because he is dead, and you would weep, too, if you were in my boots.
You see, I am the hangman and I hanged that man only a fortnight ago."
"Ah, ha!" said Gud, "you hanged an innocent man!"
"Indeed I did not! And if I wept over every innocent man I have hanged,
I would never have time to clean the scaffold. But I hanged that man for
a petty crime that was never committed."
"And you weep?" asked Gud.
"I weep," said the hangman, "because since I hanged him, we have
discovered that he was guilty of a great crime for which I hanged
another man a year ago."
"Then you are weeping for the other man?"
"No, no!" retorted the hangman, growing quite angry, "I am weeping
because, having hanged this man for a petty crime which was never
committed, I cannot hang him now for I have already hanged the other
man."
"At last I understand," said Gud, greatly relieved, "and I think I can
help you out. Go get your rope and call your citizens!"