Cousin Bill J.'s garments were as splendid as his character. He had an overcoat and cap made from a buffalo hide; his high-heeled boots had maroon tops set with purple crescents; his watch-charm was a large gold horse in full gallop; his cravat was an extensive area of scarlet satin in the midst of which was caught a precious stone as large as a robin's egg; and in smoking, which his physician had prescribed, he used a superb meerschaum cigar-holder, all tinted a golden brown, upon which lightly perched a carven angel dressed like those that ride the big white horse in the circus.

But aside from these mere matters of form, Cousin Bill J. was a man with a history. Some years before he had sprained his back, since which time he had been unable to perform hard labour; but prior to that mishap he had been a perfect specimen of physical manhood—one whose prowess had been the marvel of an extensive territory. He had split and laid up his three hundred and fifty rails many a day, when strong men beside him had blushingly to stop with three hundred or thereabouts; he had also cradled his four acres of grain in a day, and he could break the wildest horse ever known. Even the great Budd Doble, whom he personally knew, had said more than once, and in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses, that in some ways he, Budd Doble, knew less about a horse than Cousin Bill J. did. The little boy was wrought to enthusiasm by this tribute, resolving always to remember to say "hoss" for horse; and, though he had not heard of Budd Doble before, the name was magnetic for him. After you said it over several times he thought it made you feel as if you had a cold in your head.

Still further, Cousin Bill J. could throw his thumbs out of joint, sing tenor in the choir, charm away warts, recite "Roger and I" and "The Death of Little Nell," and he knew all the things that would make boys grow fast, like bringing in wood, splitting kindling, putting down hay for the cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called "peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name attractive, though his heart bled for the sufferer each time he was obliged to take it; for after every swallow of the stuff he made a face that told eloquently how nauseous it must be.

As for the satire and wit of Cousin Bill J., they were of the dry sort. He would say to one he met on the street when the mud was deep, "Fine weather overhead"—then adding dryly, after a significant pause—"but few going that way!" Or he would exclaim with feigned admiration, when the little boy shot at a bird with his bow and arrow, "My! you made the feathers fly that time!"—then, after his terrible pause—"only, the bird flew with them." Also he could call it "Fourth of Ju-New-Years" without ever cracking a smile, though it cramped the little boy in helpless laughter.

Altogether, Cousin Bill J. was a winning and lovely character of merits both spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that he could see in him—but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back upon his splendid past. There was a perfect dignity in it. Surely no mere electric belt could bring to him an attraction surpassing this—though Cousin Bill J. insisted that he never expected any real improvement until he could save up enough money to buy one. He showed the little boy a picture cut from a newspaper—the picture of a strong, proud-looking man with plenteous black whiskers, girded about with a wide belt that was projecting a great volume of electricity into the air in every direction. It was interesting enough, but the little boy thought this person by no means so beautiful as Cousin Bill J., and said so. He believed, too, though this he did not say, from tactful motives, that it would detract from the dignity of Cousin Bill J. to go about clad only in an electric belt, like the proud-looking gentleman in the picture—even if the belt did send out a lot of electric wiggles all the time. But, of course, Cousin Bill J. knew best. He looked forward to having his father meet this new hero—feeling that each was perfect in his own way.



CHAPTER VIII

SEARCHING THE SCRIPTURES

Around the evening lamp that winter the little boys studied Holy Writ, while Allan made summaries of it for the edification of the proud grandfather in far-off Florida.

Tersely was the creation and the fall of man set forth, under promptings and suggestions from Clytie and Cousin Bill J., who was no mean Bible authority: how God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," found his first pair ashamed of their nakedness, and with his own hands made them coats of skins and clothed them. "What a treasure those garments would be in this evil day," said Clytie—"what a silencing rebuke to all heretics!" But the Lord drove out the wicked pair, lest they "take also of the tree of life and live forever," saying, "Behold, the man is become as one of us!" This provoked a lengthy discussion the very first evening as to whether it meant that there was more than one God. And Clytie's view—that God called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and editors of newspapers do—at length prevailed over the polytheistic hypothesis of Cousin Bill J.

On they read to the Deluge, when man became so very bad indeed that God was sorry for ever having made him, and said: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and the beast and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them."

Hereupon Bernal suggested that all the white rabbits at least should have been saved—thinking of his own two in the warm nest in the barn. He was unable to see how white rabbits with twitching pink noses and pink rims around their eyes could be an offense, or, indeed, other than a pure joy even to one so good as God. But he gave in, with new admiration for the ready mind of Cousin Bill J., who pointed out that white rabbits could not have been saved because they were not fish. He even relished the dry quip that maybe he, the little boy, thought white rabbits were fish; but Cousin Bill J. didn't, for his part.

Past the Tower of Babel they went, when the Lord "came down to see the city and the tower," and made them suddenly talk strange tongues to one another so they could not build their tower actually into Heaven.

The little boy thought this a fine joke to play on them, to set them all "jabbering" so.

After that there was a great deal of fighting, and, in the language of Allan's summary, "God loved all the good people so he gave them lots of wives and cattle and sheep and he let them go out and kill all the other people they wanted to which was their enemies." But the little boy found the butcheries rather monotonous.

Occasionally there was something graphic enough to excite, as where the heads of Ahab's seventy children were put into a basket and exposed in two heaps at the city's gate; but for the most part it made him sleepy.

True, when it came to getting the Children of Israel out of Egypt, as Cousin Bill J. observed, "Things brisked up considerable."

The plan of first hardening Pharaoh's heart, then scaring him by a pestilence, then again hardening his heart for another calamity, quite won the little boy's admiration for its ingenuity, and even Cousin Bill J. would at times betray that he was impressed. Feverishly they followed the miracles done to Egypt; the plague of frogs, of lice, of flies, of boils and blains on man and beast; the plague of hail and lightning, of locusts, and the three days of darkness. Then came the Lord's final triumph, which was to kill all the first-born in the land of Egypt, "from the first-born of Pharaoh, that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts." Again the little boy's heart ached as he thought pityingly of the first-born of all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he see the good God gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the mark of blood, and passing the lucky doors where it was seen to be truly of a male lamb without blemish. He thought it must have taken a lot of lambs to mark up all the doors!

Then came that master-stroke of enterprise, when God directed Moses to "speak now in the ears of the people and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold," so that they might "spoil" the Egyptians. Cousin Bill J. chuckled when he read this, declaring it to be "a regular Jew trick"; but Clytie rebuked him quickly, reminding him that they were God's own words, spoken in His own holy voice.

"Well, it was mighty thoughtful in God," insisted Cousin Bill J., but Clytie said, however that was, it served Pharaoh right for getting his heart hardened so often.

The little boy, not perceiving the exact significance of "spoil" in this connection, wondered if Cousin Bill J. would spoil if some one borrowed his gold horse and ran off with it.

Then came that exciting day when the Lord said, "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host," which He did by drowning them thoroughly in the Red Sea. The little boy thought he would have liked to be there in a boat—a good safe boat that would not tip over; also that he would much like to have a rod such as Aaron had, that would turn into a serpent. It would be a fine thing to take to school some morning. But Cousin Bill J. thought it doubtful if one could be procured; though he had seen Heller pour five colours of wine out of a bottle which, when broken, proved to have a live guinea-pig in it. This seemed to the little boy more wonderful than Aaron's rod, though he felt it would not reflect honour upon God to say so.

Another evening they spent before Sinai, Cousin Bill J. reading the verses in a severe and loud tone when the voice of the Lord was sounding. Duly impressed was the little boy with the terrors of the divine presence, a thing so awful that the people must not go up into the mount nor even touch its border—lest "the Lord break forth upon them: There shall not a hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether it be beast or man it shall not live." Clytie said the goodness of God was shown herein. An evil God would not have warned them, and many worthy but ignorant people would have been blasted.

Then He came down in thunder and smoke and lightning and earthquakes—which Cousin Bill J. read in tones that enabled Bernal to feel every possible joy of terror; came to tell them that He was a very jealous God and that they must not worship any of the other gods. He commanded that "thou shalt not revile the Gods," also that they should "make no mention of the names of other Gods," which Cousin Bill J. said was as fair as you could ask.

When they reached the directions for sacrificing, the little boy was doubly alert—in the event that he should ever determine to be washed in the blood of the lamb and have to do his own killing.

"Then," read Cousin Bill J., in a voice meant to convey the augustness of Deity, "thou shalt kill the ram and take of his blood and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot." So you didn't have to wash all over in the blood. He agreed with Clytie, who remarked that no one could ever have found out how to do it right unless God had told. The God-given directions that ensued for making the water of separation from "the ashes of a red heifer" he did not find edifying; but some verses after that seemed more practicable. "And thou shalt take of the ram," continued the reader in majestic cadence, "the fat and the rump and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat that is upon them—"

Here was detail with a satisfying minuteness; and all this was for "a wave-offering" to be waved before the Lord—which was indeed an interesting thought.

"If God was so careful of His children in these small matters," said Clytie; "no wonder they believed He would care for them in graver matters, and no wonder they looked forward so eagerly to the coming of His Son, whom He promised should be sent to save them from His wrath."

Through God's succeeding minute directions for the building and upholstery of His tabernacle, "with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them," the interest of the little boys rather languished; likewise through His regulations about such dry matters as slavery, divorce, and polygamy. His directions for killing witches and for stoning the ox that gores a man or woman had more of colour in them. But there was no real interest until the good God promised His children to bring them in unto the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, to "cut them off." It was not uninteresting to know that God put Moses in a cleft of the rock and covered it with His hand when He passed by, thus permitting Moses a partial view of the divine person. But the actual fighting of battles was thereafter the chief source of interest. For God was a mighty God of battles, never weary of the glories of slaughter. When it was plain that He could make a handful of two thousand Israelites slay two hundred thousand Midianites, in a moment, as one might say, the wisdom of coming to the Feet, being born again, and washing in the blood ceased to be debatable. It would seem very silly, indeed, to neglect any precaution that would insure the favour of this God, who slew cities full of men and women and little children off-hand. The little boy thought Milo Barrus would begin to spell a certain word with the very biggest "G" he could make, if any one were to bring these matters to his notice.

As to Allan, who made abstracts of the winter's study, Clytemnestra and her transcendent relative agreed that he would one day be a power in the land. Off to Florida each week they sent his writing to Grandfather Delcher, who was proud of it, in spite of his heart going out chiefly to the littler boy.

"So this is all I know now about God," ran the conclusion, "except that He loved us so that He gave His only Son to be crucified so that He could forgive our sins as soon as He saw His Son nailed up on the cross, and those that believed it could be with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and those that didn't believe it, like the Jews and heathens, would have to be in hell for ever and ever Amen. This proves His great love for us and that He is the true God. So this is all I have learned this winter about God, who is a spirit infinite eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom and power holiness justice goodness and truth, and the word of God is contained in the scriptures of the old and new testament which is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. In my next I will take up the meek and lowly Jesus and show you how much I have learned about him."

They had been unable to persuade the littler boy into this species of composition, his mind dwelling too much on the first-born of white rabbits and such, but to show that his winter was not wholly lost, he submitted a secular composition, which ran:

"BIRDS

"The Animl kindom is devided into birds and reguler animls. Our teacher says we had ougt to obsurv so I obsurv there is three kinds of birds Jingle birds Squeek birds and Clatter birds. Jingle birds has fat rusty stumacks. I have not the trouble to obsurv any more kinds."



CHAPTER IX

ON SURVIVING THE IDOLS WE BUILD

It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the old. Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword. But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new creation—deeming that here, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.

And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly surviving us. For—and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth—we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself—but this is mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.

To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers—as if we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a better one.

Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth's divine credulity.

Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself—an idol discernible only by him, but none the less real for that.

The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of dignities, the idol of the Front Room fell next, increasing the heap of ruins that was gathering about his feet. Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went down; for the little boy saw all its sanctities violated, its mysteries laid bare. And the Front Room became a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; its carpet was on the line outside to be scourged of dust; the black, formidable furniture was out on the wide porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, plainly needing it; the vases of dyed grass might be handled without risk; and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished. Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger now, walked among the debris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding the walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper and cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid the ruins towered his valiant spirit, conscious under the catastrophe of its power to build other and yet stauncher idols.

Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power amid the base ruins of Cousin Bill J., though the time was mercifully deferred—that his soul might gain strength in worship to put away even that which it worshipped when the day of new truth dawned.

When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. He saw these works only as the outward signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. So it came that his amazement was above that of all other persons when, at Spring's first breath of honeyed fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that Miss Alvira sang alto, in the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J. produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face and hair and eyes seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin, with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought.

Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike.

Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at his side with all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person than Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light—being endowed with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the precious jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would be able to throw her thumbs out of joint, too!

But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance to the town of Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to the scenes of his early prowess.

After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets. And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County marvelling at his strength.

At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain. If his hero could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences—yes, and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm.

It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol.

Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet there came a moment when all was changed—a time of question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J.

He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with that eldest—"

Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If that was the kind she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero."

As for Cousin Bill J., of course he was a loafer! Who wouldn't be if he had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox with one blow of his fist.

Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his hero was a "come-outer"; that instead of attending church with Miss Alvira he could be heard at the barbershop of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus that God might have made the world in six days and rested on the seventh; but he couldn't have made the whale swallow Jonah, because it was against reason and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible wasn't so, how could you tell the rest of it wasn't a lot of grandmother's tales?

Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless man imposed upon when he heard Mrs. Squire Cumpston say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute has her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop all day long and lets tears fall every minute or so on her work. She spoiled five-eighths of a yard of three-inch lavender satin ribbon that way, that was going on to Mrs. Beasley's second-mourning bonnet. And she's had to cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for spending-money, and order the stores not to trust him one cent on her account."

He was sorry to have Miss Alvira crying so much. It must be a sloppy business, making her hats and things. But what did the woman expect of a man like Cousin Bill J., anyway?

Yet somehow it came after a few years the new light upon his old idol. One day he found that he neither resented nor questioned a thing he heard Clytie herself say about Cousin Bill J.: "Why, he don't know as much as a goat." Here she reconsidered, with an air of wanting to be entirely fair:—"Well, not as much as a goat really ought to know!" And when he overheard old Squire Cumpston saying on the street, a few days later, "Of all God's mean creatures, the meanest is a male human that can keep his health on the money a woman earns!" it was no shock, though he knew that Cousin Bill J. was meant.

Departed then was the glory of his hero, his splendid dimensions shrunk, his effective lustre dulled, his perfect moustache rusted and scraggly, his chin weakened, his pale blue eyes seen to be in force like those of a china doll.

He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had urged Miss Alvira to divorce her husband, that she had refused, declaring God had joined her to Cousin Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that marriage had been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament and was now indissoluble—an emblem, indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and that, as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it.

Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct manifestation of Providence the sudden removal of Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia. For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected even by those who considered that she sang alto half a note off, while her husband had gradually acquired the disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom. Many, indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his sex.

Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended observance of the decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them, however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the post-office next day, "It was her funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to the world. She rode to the last resting-place of her husband—Elias also made a funny joke about his having merely changed resting-places—decked in a bonnet on which were many blossoms. She had worn it through years when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it seemed that God from His infinity had chosen her to suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may know—and now that He had set her free she was not the one to pretend grief with some lying pall of crepe. And on the new bonnet she wore to church, the first Sabbath after, there still flowered above her somewhat drawn face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were rooted in her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she sang her alto—such as it was—with just a hint of tossing defiance. Yet there was no need for that. Edom thought well of her.

No one was known to have mourned the departed save an inferior dog he had made his own and been kind to; but this creature had little sympathy or notice, though he was said to have waited three days and three nights on the new earth that topped the grave of Cousin Bill J. For, quite aside from his unfortunate connection, he had not been thought well of as a dog.



CHAPTER X

THE PASSING OF THE GRATCHER; AND ANOTHER

From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his children. And though from visit to visit there were external variations in him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless. When his garments were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the reverse. Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations.

One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopaeia, and who would out of love for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal consideration.

Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large cities, and being spoken of as "the phenomenal California baritone." His admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities.

Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely introducing for the manufacturers—perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples. It appeared—so the little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus—that few men could resist buying a tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day or so. Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would.

There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this father. This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter. When the perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept there so closely that neither ever beheld the other. The little boy was much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together. But when he came to understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was troubled. He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the father was in the village. He could have no love and but little friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And so a breach widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre into his sentiments of loyalty and justice.

Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished.

With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was more plausible now that a prince, "all dressed up in shiny Prince Clothes," would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful darling!" while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the front piazza impotently shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it was too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a different manner. If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a quiet life to the bringing up of her children.

The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what it was to be disappointed in one's family. The family he would have chosen for his own was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills. In one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children to a small boy that always looked much like himself. In the other picture these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very top of the great tent, from trapeze to trapeze, with the littlest boy happily in the greatest danger, midway in the air between the two proud parents, who were hurling him back and forth.

It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection with a family of which only one member had either courage or ambition. One had only to study Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to see how hopeless it all was.

The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, who could climb about unchided on the frailest of high scaffolds, swing from the dizziest cupola, or sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder—always without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his clothes or not.

Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and Nancy seemed to cross a chasm of growth so wide that one thrilled to look back to the farther side where all objects showed little and all interests were juvenile. And this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the Gratcher, came in this wise. As they rested from play—this being a time when the Gratcher was most likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, the usual alarm was given, followed by the usual unbreathing silence. The little boy fixedly bent his magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his arms, to listen fearfully for the setting of the monster's crutches at the end of each stride, to feel if the earth trembled, as it often distinctly did, under his awful tread.

Wider grew the eyes of both at each "Now he's nearer still!" of the little boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful face leering past the corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. This was to pick you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost your mind.

But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into each other's eyes—and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick little self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once as if two grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had been playing at a childish game under some spell. The moment was not without embarrassment, because of their having caught themselves in the very act and frenzy of showing terror of this clumsy fiction. Foolishly they averted their glances, after that first little laugh of sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, and this time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took away not only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but their first embarrassment of themselves. Then, with no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that the other understood, they began to talk of life again, feeling older and wiser, which truly they were.

For, though many in time wax brave to beard their Gratcher even in his lair, only the very wise learn this—that the best way to be rid of him is to laugh him away—that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one to whom he has become funny.

The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal crying for another idol. In its stead, for his own chastening and with all reverence, the little boy erected the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness his sudden devastations among the first-born of all things, from white rabbits to men.

But an idol next went down that not only left a wretched vacancy in the boy's pantheon, but fell against his heart and made an ugly wound. It was as if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day when the Gratcher shrivelled in the blast of his laugh.

A little later came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was done. The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things without which the little boy now saw no one could be a gentleman.

He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to believe that some fearful change had been wrought in his father. But his memory of former visits was scrupulously photographic—phonographic even. He recalled from the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that now made his cheeks burn. The things rioted brutally before him, until it seemed that something inside of him strove to suppress them—as if a shamed hand reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense into decent hiding with one quick sweep.

This time he took care that Nancy should not meet his father. Yet he walked the streets with him as before—walking defiantly and with shame those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace. Now he went forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that they did so. Once his father rallied him upon his "grumpiness"; then he grew sullen—though trying to smile—thinking with mortification of his grandfather. He understood the old man now.

He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was glad when his father went—this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever they were!



CHAPTER XI

THE STRONG PERSON'S NARRATIVE

Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death. In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished in the fire through his own foolhardiness. The news came by two channels: first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving little more than the fact itself.

But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor effects and a full relation of the matter. He was a person of kind heart, evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom—a bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists.

He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having wished to hear no more of the occurrence.

"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use.

"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the little stage-entrance, though havin' to leave many of our props—a good coat I had to lose meself, fur-lined around the collar, by way of helpin' the Sisters Devere get out their box of accordions that they done a Dutch Daly act with for an enn-core. Well, as I was sayin', we'd all hustled down these back stairs—they was already red hot and smokin' up good, you understan', and there we was shiverin' outside in the snow, kind of rattled, and no wonder, at that, and the ladies of the troupe histurrical—it had come like a quick-change, you understan', when all of a sudden up in the air goes the Original Kelly. Say, he lets out a yell for your life—'Oh, my God!' he says, 'my kids—up there,' pointin' to where the little flames was spittin' out through the side like a fire-eatin' act. Then down he flops onto his knees in the snow, prayin' like the—prayin' like mad, you understan', and callin' on the blessed Virgin to save little Patsy, who was just gittin' good with his drum-major act and whirlin' a fake musket—and also little Joseph, who was learnin' to do some card-tricks that wasn't so bad. Well, so everybody begins to scream louder and run this way and that, you understan', callin' the kids and thinkin' Kelly was nutty, because they must 'a got out. But Kelly keeps right on prayin' to the holy Virgin, the tears runnin' down his make-up—say, he looked awful, on the dead! And then we hears another yell, and here was Prof. at the window with one of the kids, sure enough. He'd got up them two flights of stairs, though they was all red smoky, like when you see fire through smoke. Well, he motions to catch the kid, so we snatches a cloak off one of the girls and holds it out between us, you understan', while he leans out and drops the kid into it, all safe and sound.

"Just then we seen the place all light up back of him, and we yelled to him to jump, too—he could 'a saved himself, you understan', but he waves his hand and shook his head—say, lookin' funny, too, with his mus-tache half burned off, and we seen him go back out of sight for the other little Kelly—Kelly still promisin' to give up all he had to the Virgin if she saved his boys.

"Well, for a minute the crowd kep' still, kind 'a holdin' its breath, you understan', till the Prof.'d come back with the other kid—and holdin' it and holdin' it till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the window—and—nothin' happens, you understan'—just the fire keeps on gittin' busy. Honest, I begun to feel shaky, but then up comes one of these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns, with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was great doings with these Silases screamin' to each other a foot away through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since the Prof. got up 'em, and before any one does anything the whole inside caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky.

"Well, of course, that settles it, you understan'—about the little Kelly and the Prof. We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the corner of the next block, where they was workin' over the kid Prof. saved—it was Patsy—and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin' the kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty all to once—say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, laughin' till you'd think she'd bust, only it sounded like she was cryin' at the same time, and screamin' out at the top of her voice, 'Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off! Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off!'—way up high like that, over and over. Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm full of knockouts. Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time, what with the lady bein' that way I'm 'a tellin' you, and Kelly, the crazy Irishman—I could hear him off in one corner givin' his reg'ler stunt about his friend, O'Houlihan, lately landed and lookin' for work, comes to a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, 'Begobs!'—you know the old gag—say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin' around in that dressin'-room for Kelly's other kid, when he might 'a jumped after he got the first one, and, say, this is no kid—first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby.

"Well, as I was sayin', there I am and all I can see through the fog is one 'a these here big lighted signs down the street with 'George's Place' on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer. Me to George's, at once. When Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I'm tryin' to tell a gang of Silases how it all happened and chokin' up every time so's I have to have another.

"Well, of course, we break up next day. Kelly tells me, after he gits right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin' one 'a these here scapulars on—he shows it to me hanging around the kid's neck, inside his clothes. He says little Joseph must 'a left his off, or he'd 'a' been saved, too. He showed me a piece in one 'a these little religious books that says there was nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular—that a man can't be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears one. I says it's a pity the Prof. didn't have one on, but Kelly says they won't work for Protestants. But I don't know—I never purtended to be good on these propositions of religious matters. And there wasn't any chance of findin' the kid to prove if Kelly had it right or not.

"But the Prof. he was certainly a great boy for puttin' up three-sheets about his own two kids; anybody that would listen—friend or stranger—made no difference to him. He starred 'em to anybody, you understan'—what corkers they was, and all like that. It seemed like Kelly's havin' two kids also kind 'a touched on his feelin's. Honest, I ain't ever got so worked up over anything before in me whole life."

When this person had gone the old man called the two boys to his room and prayed with them; keeping the younger to sit with him a long time afterward, as if feeling that his was the heavier heart.



CHAPTER XII

A NEW THEORY OF A CERTAIN WICKED MAN

The time of the first sorrow was difficult for the boy. There was that first hard sleep after one we love has gone—in which we must always dream that it is not true—a sleep from which we awaken to suffer all the shock of it again. Then came black nights when the perfect love for the perfect father came back in all its early tenderness to cry the little boy to sleep. Yet it went rapidly enough at last, as times of sorrow go for the young. There even came a day when he found in a secret place of his heart a chastened, hopeful inquiry if all might not have been for the best. He had loved his father—there had been between them an unbreakable bond; yet this very love had made him suffer at every thought of him while he was living, whereas now he could love him with all tender memories and with no poisonous misgivings about future meetings with their humiliations. Now his father was made perfect in Heaven, and even Grandfather Delcher—whose aloofness here he had ceased to blame—would not refuse to meet and know him there.

Naturally, then, he turned to his grandfather in his great need for a new idol to fill the vacant niche. Aforetime the old man in his study upstairs had been little more than a gray shadow, a spirit of gloom, stubbornly imprisoning another spirit that would have been kind if it could have escaped. But the little boy drew near to him, and found him curiously companionable. Where once he had shunned him, he now went freely to the study with his lessons or his storybook, or for talk of any little matter. His grandfather, it seemed, could understand many things which so old a man could scarcely have been expected to understand. In token of this there would sometimes creep over his brown old face a soft light that made it seem as if there must still be within him somewhere the child he had once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the little boy as into a mirror that threw the sunlight of his own boyhood into his time-worn face. Side by side, before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, since they were friendly enough to be silent if they liked. Only one confidence the little boy could not bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had done, for his coldness to his father; that he had divined—and felt a great shame for—the true reason of that coldness. But he thought the old man must understand without words. It was hardly a matter to be talked of.

About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings and difficulties, he was free to talk; about coming to the Feet, and the Front Room, and being washed in the blood, and born again—matters that made the old man wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed.

But now they made up for lost time. Patiently and ably he taught the little boy those truths he needed to know; to seek for eternal life through the atoning blood of the Saviour, whose part it had been to purchase our redemption from God's wrath by his death on Calvary. Of other matters more technical: of how the love that God of necessity has for His own infinitely perfect being is the reason and the measure of the hatred he has for sin. Above all did he teach the little boy how to pray for the grace of effectual calling, in order that, being persuaded of his sin and misery, he might thereafter partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and those several benefits which, in this life, do either accompany or flow from them. They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when he should become a great and good man, preaching the gospel of the crucified Son to spellbound throngs.



Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, the little boy now entering seriously upon that work of writing commentaries which had once engaged Allan. In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came upon a passage that impressed him as notable. It seemed to him that there was not only that vein of poetic imagination—without which one cannot be a great preacher—but a certain individual boldness of approach, monstrous in its naive sentimentality, to be sure, but indicating a talent that promised to mature splendidly.

"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must be crucified before he could take his seat on the right hand of God and send to hell those who had rejected him. He told them that one of them would have to betray him, because it must be like the Father had said. It says at the last supper Jesus said, 'The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had not been born.'

"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it looks to me more like the angel of the Lord might have entered into him, he being a good man to start with, or our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. Judas knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one of the disciples had got to betray the Saviour and go to hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Well, Judas loved all the disciples very much, so he thought he would be the one and save one of the others. So he went out and agreed to betray him to the rulers for thirty pieces of silver. He knew if he didn't do it, it might have to be Peter, James, or John, or some one the Saviour loved very dearly, because it had to be one of them. So after it was done and he knew the others were saved from this foul deed, he went back to the rulers and threw down their money, and went out and hung himself. If he had been a bad man, it seems more like he would have spent that money in wicked indulgences, food and drink and entertainments, etc. Of course, Judas knew he would go to hell for it, so he was not as lucky as Jesus, who knew he would go to heaven and sit at the right hand of God when he died, which was a different matter from Judas's, who would not have any reward at all but going to hell. It looks to me like poor Judas had ought to be brought out of hell-fire, and I shall pray Jesus to do it when he gets around to it."

However it might be with our Lord's betrayer, there was one soul now seen to be deservedly in hell. Through the patient study of the Scriptures as expounded by Grandfather Delcher, the little boy presently found himself accepting without demur the old gentleman's unspoken but sufficiently indicated opinion. His father was in everlasting torment—having been not only unbaptised, but godless and a scoffer. With a quickening sense of the majesty of that Spirit infinitely good, a new apprehension of His plan's symmetry, he read the words meant to explain, to comfort him, silently indicated one day by the old man:

"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

"What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?

"And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory."

It hurt at first, but the young mind hardened to it dutifully—the big, laughing, swaggering, scoffing father—a device of God made for torment, that the power of the All-loving might show forth! If the father had only repented, he might have gone straight to heaven as did Cousin Bill J. For the latter had obtained grace in his last days, and now sang acceptably before the thrones of the Father and the Son. But the unbaptised scoffer must burn forever—and the little boy knew at last what was meant by "the majesty of God."



BOOK TWO

The Age of Reason



CHAPTER I

THE REGRETTABLE DEMENTIA OF A CONVALESCENT

"You know you please me—really you do!"

Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny locks, bent upon inquiring Nancy a look of wholly pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to persuade her from doubt.

"I'm not joking a bit. When I say you please me, I mean it."

His look became rather more expansive with a smile that seemed meant to sympathise guardedly with her in her necessary rejoicing.

Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, murmuring from out the friendly gloom:

"It's very good of you, Allan!"

Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a question about Bernal.

He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains.

"He's there, poor chap! He was able to get that far for the first time yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie."

"And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night. I'd surely have left the old school and come before if I'd heard. I wouldn't have cared what Aunt Bell said."

"Eight weeks down, and you know we found he'd been sick long before he found it out himself—walking typhoid, they called it. He came home from college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he clapped eyes on him. Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all run down."

"And he was very ill?"

"Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all."

"How dreadful—poor Bernal! Oh, if he had died!"

"Out of his head for three weeks at a time—raving fearfully. And you know, he's quite like an infant now—says the simplest things. He laughs at it himself. He says he's not sure if he knows how to read and write."

"Poor, dear Bernal!"

With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then continued:

"Yes, Bernal's really an awfully good chap at bottom." He turned again to look up at the study windows. "You know, I intend to stand by that fellow always—no matter what he does! Of course, I shall not let his being my brother blind me to his faults—doubtless we all have faults; but I tell you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man's make-up."

She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off—"Now I must hurry to mail these letters It's good to be home for another summer. You really do please me, Nance!"

She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome—more than handsome, indeed. He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail. Featured in almost faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have many satellites and be satellite to none; an ego of genuine lordliness; a presence at once masterly and decorative.

And yet she was conscious of a note—not positively of discord, but one still exciting a counter-stream of reflection. She had observed that each time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his shoulders with it: the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a studied unison. And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a certain needle-like suspicion—a suspicion that the young man might be not wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle.

Yet this was no matter to permit in one's mind. For Nancy of the lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves. Even in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences toward the world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child's anarchy of thought—her luxuriant young emotions "done up" sedately with her hair. She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as this concerning Allan. Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then she wondered why it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a creature to wonder where another would accept. She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry.

This phrase would not be Nancy's—only she knew it to be the way her uncle, for example, would translate Allan's praise of his brother. She hoped Bernal had not been very bad—and wondered how bad.

Then she went to him. Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could she be sure that the second did. But she knew it was loud enough to be heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and peeped in. He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower part of his body. He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that appeared above the window. She thought he could not have heard her, but he called:

"Clytie!"

She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he weakly turned his head on the pillow.

"Nancy!"

He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers. The laugh did not end until there were tears in his eyes. She laughed with him as a strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found.

"Don't be flattered, Nance—it's only typhoid emotion," he said at last, in a voice that sounded strangely unused. "You don't really overcome me, you know—the sight of you doesn't unman me as much as these fond tears might make you suspect. I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, too." He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him.

"How plump and warm your hand is—all full of little whispering pulses. My hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and so uninterested! Doesn't fever bring forward a man's bones in the most shameless way?"

"Oh, Bernal—but you'll soon have them decently hidden again—indeed, you're looking—quite—quite plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden new look in his eyes made her own face serious again.

"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!"

She smiled.

"Only then?"

He studied her, while she pretended to be grave.

He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal.

"Well—you know—now you have some little odds and ends of features—not bad—no, not even half bad, for that matter. I can see thousands of miles into your eyes—there's a fire smouldering away back in there—it's all smoky and mysterious after you go the first few thousand miles—but, I don't know—I believe the smile is needed, Nance. Poor child, I tell you this as a friend, for your own good—it seems to make a fine big perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are only fairly satisfactory."

She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to its home.

"Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it melts."

"I see—now I shall be going about with an endless, sickening grin. It will come to that—doubtless I shall be murdered for it—people that do grin that way always make me feel like murder."

"And they could never guess your eyes until the little smile runs up to light their chandeliers."

"Dear me!—Like a janitor!"

"—or the chin, until the little smile does curly things all around it—"

"There, now—calm yourself—the doctor will be here presently—and you know, you're among friends—"

"—or the face itself until those little pink ripples get to chasing each other up to hide in your hair, as they are now. You know you're blushing, Nance, so stop it. Remember, it's when you smile; remember, also, that smiles are born, not made. It's a long time since I've seen you, Nance."

"Two years—we didn't come here last summer, you know."

"But you've aged—you're twice the woman you were—so, on the whole, I'm not in the least disappointed in you."

"Your sickness seems to have left you—well—in a remarkably unprejudiced state of mind."

He laughed. "That's the funny part of it. Did they tell you this siege had me foolish for weeks? Honest, now, Nance, here's a case—how many are two times two?" He waited expectantly.

"Are you serious?"

"It seems silly to you, doesn't it—but answer as if I were a child."

"Well—twice two are four—unless my own mind is at fault."

"There!—now I begin to believe it. I suppose, now, it couldn't be anything else, could it? Yesterday morning the doctor said something was as plain as twice two are four. You know, the thing rankled in me all day. It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two. Then I asked Clytie and she said it was four, but that didn't satisfy me. Of course, Clytemnestra is a dear soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in an educational way have been meagre. She could hardly be considered an authority in mathematics, even if she is the ideal cook and friend. But I have more faith in your learning, Nance. The doctor's solution seems plausible, since you've sided with him. I suppose you could have no motive for deceiving me?"

She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and this he detected.

"It's nothing to worry about, Nance—it's only funny. I haven't lost my mind or anything, you know—spite of my tempered enthusiasm for your face—but this is it: first there came a fearful shock—something terrible, that shattered me—then it seemed as if that sickness found my brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little problems worked out on it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was in to feed me the inside of a baked potato before you came. After I'd fought with her to eat the skin of it—such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn't all been dug out—and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then she assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too. I told her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway—and the poor thing giggled."

"Still, you have your lucid moments."

"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm lucid when you smile, and daffy when you don't. But that's a case of it—your face—"

"My face a case of what? You're getting commercial—even shoppy. Really, if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged—"

"A case of it—of this blankness of mine. Instead of continuing my early prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey you coldly for the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print for fear I've forgotten how to read."

"Nonsense!"

"No—I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G. Wells's stories—a gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you—bland, agreeable, scholarly—with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one's secretest bones is held to betoken the only beauty—you understand that?—Well, I come here, and everything is different—ideals of beauty, people absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example—numbers, language, institutions, everything. Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe's."

"Oh, so that is why you could see that I'm not—"

"Also, why I could see that you are—that's it, smile! Nance, you are a dear, when you smile—you make a man feel so strong and protecting. But if you knew all the queer things I've thought in the last week about time and people and the world. This morning I woke up mad because I'd been cheated out of the past. Where is all the past, Nance? There's just as much past somewhere as there is future—if one's soul has no end, it had no beginning. Why not worry about the past as we do about the future? First thing I'm going to do—start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues and a president, and by-laws and things!"

"Don't you think I'd better send Clytie, now?"

"No; please wait a minute." He clutched her hand with a new strength, and raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower:

"Nance, you know I've had a feeling it wasn't the right thing to ask the old gentleman this—he might think I hadn't been studying at college—but you tell me—what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ? It was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind."

"Bernal—you surely know!"

"Truly I don't—it seems a bad dream I've had some time—that's all—some awful dream about my father."

"It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on Calvary."

"Our redemption from what?"

"From sin, to be sure."

"What sin?"

"Why, our sin, of course—the sin of Adam which comes down to us."

"You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?"

"Yes."

"From whom did he purchase it?"

"Oh, dear—this is like a catechism—from God, of course."

"The God that made Adam?"

"Certainly."

"Oh, yes—now I seem to remember him—he was supposed to make people, and then curse them, wasn't he? And so he had to have his son killed before he could forgive Adam for our sins?"

"No; before he could forgive us for Adam's sin, which descended to us."

"Came down like an entail, eh? ... Adam couldn't disinherit us? Well, how did this God have his son die?"

"Why, Bernal—you must remember, dear—you knew so well—don't you know he was crucified?"

"To be sure I do—how stupid! And was God very cheerful after that? No more trouble about Adam or anything?"

"You must hush—I can't tell you about these things—wait till your grandfather comes."

"No, I want to have it from you, Nance—grandad would think I'd been slighting the classics."

"Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe."

"Believe what?"

"Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son."

"What does he do with those who don't believe it?"

"They—they—Oh, I don't know—really, Bernal, I must go now."

"Just a minute, Nance!" He clutched more tightly the hand he had been holding. "I see now! I must be remembering something I knew—something that brought me down sick. If a man doesn't believe God was capable of becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son would appease his anger toward us, he sends that man where—where the worm doeth something or other—what is it? Oh, well!—of course, it's of no importance—only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if grandad should ask me about it. What a quaint belief it must have been."

"Oh, I must go!—let me, now."

"Don't you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old religions of a dead past—though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was too crude to be funny—by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son?—'unless ye eat the flesh of the son—'"

She drew her hand from his now and arose in some dismay. He lay back upon his pillow, smiling.

"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come again, and I'll tell you about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time—I remember now that they interested me a lot before I was sick."

"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" She looked down at him anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly over hers.

"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the next baked potato. If Clytie doesn't give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget that she's a woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't be leaving me alone."

Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room.

"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter already—Nancy must come often."

He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning's mail. Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings and pats, he turned to him.

"Well, my boy?"

"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, my memory is still freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also 'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also 'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man—we—good; not we—bad! I suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human nature—a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude lines of it.

"And this tribe—the Bakairi, it is called—is equally crude in its religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?"

"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians."

"Well, sir, this Bakairi tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by butchering this particular member of the tribe and—incredible as it sounds—eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come. I remember the historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any priest; that one doing this might find it followed by an unpleasant circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next yearly sacrifice."

"Curious, indeed, and most revolting," assented the old man, laying down his paper. "You are feeling more cheerful, aren't you—and you look so much brighter. Ah, what a mercy of God's you were spared to me!—you know you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy—I could hardly go far without you now, my son."

"Yes, sir—thank you—I've just been recalling some of the older religions—Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith."

"I'm glad indeed. I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the least bit—well, frivolous—but I am an old man, and doubtless the things that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued through the years."

"Nancy wasn't a bit frivolous this morning—on the contrary, she seemed for some reason to consider me the frivolous one. She looked shocked at me more than once. Now, about the old Christian faith, you know—their god was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually. Yet I suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the god of the Bakairi, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god, whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes."

"Yes, my boy—quite so," replied the old man most soothingly. He stepped gently to the door. Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his room. He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for Bernal to hear:

"Go quickly for Dr. Merritt. He's out of his head again."



CHAPTER II

FURTHER DISTRESSING FANTASIES OF A CLOUDED MIND

When young Dr. Merritt came, flushed and important-looking, greatly concerned by the reported relapse, he found his patient with normal pulse and temperature—rational and joyous at his discovery that the secret of reading Roman letters was still his.

"I was almost afraid to test it, Doctor," he confessed, smilingly, when the little thermometer had been taken from between his lips, "but it's all right—I didn't find a single strange letter—every last one of them meant something—and I know figures, too—and now I'm as hungry for print as I am for baked potatoes. You know, never in my life again, after I'm my own master, shall I neglect to eat the skin of my baked potato. When I think of those I let go in my careless days of plenty, I grow heart-sick."

"A little at a time, young man. If they let you gorge as you'd like to there would be no more use sending for me; you'd be a goner—that's what you'd be! Head feel all right?"

"Fine!—I've settled down to a pleasant reading of Holy Writ. This Old Testament is mighty interesting to me, though doubtless I've read it all before."

"It's a very complicated case, but I think he's coming on all right," the doctor assured the alarmed old man outside the door. "He may be a little flighty now and then, but don't pay any attention to him; just soothe him over. He's getting back to himself—stronger every hour. We often have these things to contend with."

And the doctor, outwardly confident, went away to puzzle over the case.

Again the following morning, when Bernal had leaned his difficult way down to the couch in the study, the old man was dismayed by his almost unspeakable aberrations. With no sign of fever, with a cool brow and placid pulse, in level tones, he spoke the words of the mad.

"You know, grandad," he began easily, looking up at the once more placid old man who sat beside him, "I am just now recalling matters that were puzzling me much before the sickness began to spin my head about so fast on my shoulders. The harder I thought, the faster my head went around, until it sent my mind all to little spatters in a circle about me. One thing I happened to be puzzling over was how the impression first became current that this god of the Jews was a being of goodness. Such an impression seems to have been tacitly accepted for some centuries after the iniquities so typical of him had been discountenanced by society—long after human sacrifice was abhorred, and even after the sacrificing of animals was held to be degrading. It's a point that escapes me, owing to my addled brain; doubtless you can set me right. At present I can't conceive how the notion could ever have occurred to any one. I now remember this book well enough to know that not only is little good ever recorded of him, but he is so continually barbarous, and so atrociously cruel in his barbarities. And he was thought to be all-powerful when he is so pitifully ineffectual, with all his crude power—the poor old fellow was forever bungling—then bungling again in his efforts to patch up his errors. Indeed, he would be rather a pathetic figure if he were not so monstrous! Still, there is a kind of heathen grandeur about him at times. He drowns his world full of people because his first two circumvented him; then he saves another pair, but things go still worse, so he has to keep smiting the world right and left, dumb beasts as well as men; and at last he picks out one tribe, in whose behalf he works a series of miracles, that devastated a wide area. How he did love to turn a city over to destruction! And from the cloud's centre he was constantly boasting of his awful power, and scaring people into butchering lambs and things in his honour. Yet, doubtless, that heathen tribe found its god 'good,' and other people formed the habit of calling him good, without thinking much about it. They must have felt queer when they woke up to the fact that they were calling infinitely good a god who was not good, even when judged by their poor human standards."

Remembering the physician's instructions to soothe the patient, the distressed old man timidly began—

"'For God so loved the world'"—but he was interrupted by the vivacious one on the couch.

"That's it—I remember that tradition. He was even crude enough to beget a son for human sacrifice, giving that son power to condemn thereafter those who should not detect his godship through his human envelope! That was a rather subtler bit of baseness than those he first perpetrated—to send this saving son in such guise that the majority of his creatures would inevitably reject him! Oh! he was bound to have his failures and his tortures, wasn't he? You know, I dare say the ancient Christians called him good because they were afraid to call him bad. Doubtless the one great spiritual advance that we have made since the Christian faith prevailed is, that we now worship without fearing what we worship."

Once more the distressed old man had risen to stand with assumed carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he could no longer endure the profane flood.

"But, truly, that god was, after all, a pathetic figure. Imagine him amid the ruins of his plan, desolate, always foiled by his creatures—meeting failure after failure from Eden to Calvary—for even the bloody expedient of sending his son to be sacrificed did not avail to save his own chosen people. They unanimously rejected the son, if I remember, and so he had to be content with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful old figure of futility he is—a fine figure for a big epic, it seems to me. By the way, what was the date that this religion was laughed away. I can remember perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities—how many years there were when the common people believed in the divine origin of the Odyssey, while the educated classes were more or less discreetly heretical, until at last the whole Olympian outfit became poetic myths. But strangely enough I do not recall just the date when we began to demand a god of dignity and morality."

The old man had been loath to leave the sufferer. He still stood by the open door to call to the first passer-by. Now, shudderingly wishful to stem the torrent of blasphemies, innocent though they were, he ventured cautiously:

"There was Sinai—you forget the tables—the moral law—the ten commandments."

"Sinai, to be sure. Christians used to regard that as an occasion of considerable dignity, didn't they? The time when he gave directions about slavery and divorce and polygamy—he was beautifully broad-minded in all those matters, and to kill witches and to stone an ox that gored any one, and how to disembowel the lambs used for sacrifice, and what colours to use in the tabernacle."

But the horrified old man had fled. Half an hour later he returned with Dr. Merritt, relieving Clytie, who had watched outside the door and who reported that there had been no signs of violence within.

Again they found a normal pulse and temperature, and an appetite clamouring for delicacies of strong meat. Young Dr. Merritt was greatly puzzled.

"I understand the case perfectly," he said to the old man; "he needs rest and plenty of good nursing—and quiet. We often have these cases. Your head feels all right, doesn't it?" he asked Bernal.

"Fine, Doctor!"

"I thought so." He looked shrewdly at the old man. "Your grandfather had an idea you might be—perhaps a bit excited."

"No—not a bit. We've had a fine morning chatting over some of the primitive religions, haven't we, old man?" and he smiled affectionately up to his grandfather. "Hello, Nance, come and sit by me."

The girl had paused in the doorway while he spoke, and came now to take his hand, after a look of inquiry at the two men. The latter withdrew, the eyes of the old man sadly beseeching the eyes of the physician for some definite sign of hope.

Inside, the sufferer lay holding a hand of Nancy between his cheek and the pillow—with intervals of silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, it appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent.

"The first ideas are all funny, aren't they, Nance? Genesis in that Christian mythology we were discussing isn't the only funny one. There was the old northern couple who danced on the bones of the earth nine times and made nine pairs of men and women; and there were the Greek and his wife who threw stones out of their ark that changed to men; and the Hindu that saved the life of a fish, and whom the fish then saved by fastening his ship to his horn; and the South Sea fisherman who caught his hook in the water-god's hair and made him so angry that he drowned all the world except the offending fisherman. Aren't they nearly as funny as the god who made one of his pair out of clay and one from a rib, and then became so angry with them that he must beget a son for them to sacrifice before he would forgive them? Let's think of the pleasanter ones. Do you know that hymn of the Veda?—'If I go along trembling like a cloud, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!'

"'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone wrong. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!'

"And Buddha was a pleasant soul, Nance—with stuff in him, too—born a prince, yet leaving his palace to be poor and to study the ways of wisdom, until enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. He said faith was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to commit any sin, to do good and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating those who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' They must have been glad of Buddhism in their day, teaching them to honour their parents, to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies and return good for evil. And there was funny old Confucius with his 'Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow—happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both riches and honour seem to me like the passing cloud.' Another one of his is 'In the book of Poetry are three hundred pieces—but the designs of them all mean, "Have no depraved thoughts."' Rather good for a Chinaman, wasn't it?

"And there was old Zoroaster saying to his Ormuzd, 'I believe thee, O God! to be the best thing of all!' and asking for guidance. Ormuzd tells him to be pure in thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste and truthful—and this Ormuzd would have no lambs sacrificed to him. Life, being his gift, was dear to him. And don't forget Mohammed, Nance, that fine old barbarian with the heart of a passionate child, counselling men to live a good life and to strive after the mercy of God by fasting, charity and prayer, calling this the 'Key of Paradise.' He went after a poor blind man whom he had at first rebuffed, saying 'He is thrice welcome on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded me.' He was a fine, stubborn old believer, Nance. I wonder if it's not true that the Christians once studied these old chaps to take the taste of their own cruder God out of their minds. What a cruel people they must have been to make so cruel a God!

"But let's talk of you, Nance—that's it—light the chandeliers in your eyes."

He spoke drowsily now, and lay quiet, patting one of her hands. But presently he was on one elbow to study her again.

"Nance, the Egyptians worshipped Nature, the Greeks worshipped Beauty, the Northern chaps worshipped Courage, and the Christians feared—well, the hereafter, you know—but I'm a Catholic when you smile."



CHAPTER III

REASON IS AGAIN ENTHRONED

Slowly the days brought new life to the convalescent, despite his occasional attacks of theological astigmatism. And these attacks grew less frequent and less marked as the poor bones once more involved themselves in firm flesh—to the glad relief of a harried and scandalised old gentleman whose black forebodings had daily moved him to visions of the mad-house for his best-loved descendant.

Yet there were still dreadful times when the young man on the couch blasphemed placidly by the hour, with an insane air of assuming that those about him held the same opinions; as if the Christian religion were a pricked bubble the adherents of which had long since vanished.

If left by himself he could often be heard chuckling and muttering between chuckles: "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host. I have hardened his heart and the heart of his host that I might show these my signs before him."

Entering the room, the old gentleman might be met with:

"I certainly agree with you, sir, in every respect—Christianity was an invertebrate materialism of separation—crude, mechanical separation—less spiritual, less ethical, than almost any of the Oriental faiths. Affirming the brotherhood of man, yet separating us into a heaven and a hell. Christians cowering before a being of divided power, half-god and half-devil. Indeed, I remember no religion so non-moral—none that is so baldly a mere mechanical device for meeting the primitive mind's need to set its own tribe apart from all others—or in the later growth to separate the sheep from the goats, by reason of the opinion formed of certain evidence. Even schoolboys nowadays know that no moral value inheres in any opinion formed upon evidence. Yet, I dare say it was doubtless for a long period an excellent religion for marauding nations."

Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational talk, the unfortunate young man would break out with, "And how childish its wonder-tales were, of iron made to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of a coin found in a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season—how childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it is somewhere naively put—an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. Even the great old painters were helpless before it. They were driven to make mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to idealise mere physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, perverted idea of motherhood—'conceiving without sin.' It's an unclean dogma in its implications. I knew somewhere once a man named Milo Barrus—a sort of cheap village atheist, I remember, but one thing I recall hearing him say seems now to have a certain crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old mother, seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with the work of raising us seven children; she's slaved so hard for fifty years that she's worn her wedding-ring to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had a thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles like a girl of sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to one of us hounds, and I believe she never even wanted to complain in all her days. And there's a look of noble capacity in her face, of soul dignity, that you never saw in any Madonna's. I tell you no "virgin mother" could be as beautiful as my mother, who bore seven children for love of my father and for love of the thought of us.' Isn't it queer, sir, that I remember that—for it seemed only grotesque at the time I heard it."

It was after this extraordinary speech, uttered with every sign of physical soundness, that young Dr. Merritt confided to the old man when they had left the study:

"He's coming on fine, Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself into shape now in no time; but—I don't know—seems to me you stand a lot better show of making a preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken—we doctors often are." Then the young physician became loftily humble: "But it doesn't strike me he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape again!"

"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?"

"Well, well—perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're what we doctors call 'fixed delusions.'"

"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the Word. Oh, I've looked forward to it so long—and so hard!"

"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not excite him. We often have these cases."

The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have been reprobated in a well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman's presence that, whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand reaching down to "remove" people—"the way you weed an onion bed"—he now conceived it to be like her own—"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It was so dangerously close to irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful.