ELLEN LEVIS
A NOVEL

BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER
Author of "Katy Gaumer," "Basil Everman," etc.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ELSIE SINGMASTER LEWARS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

CONTENTS

ELLEN LEVIS

CHAPTER I
A FRIEND IN NEED

On a dismal day in March, four years before Ellen Levis was born or dreamed of, the slight acquaintance of Stephen Lanfair and Edward Levis was quickened by an unpleasant incident into friendship. Both attended the University Medical School in Philadelphia and both were ambitious, but there the resemblance between them ended. Stephen, an underclassman, the only son of a physician, had been started early and well in his career, and was the youngest student; Levis, a Senior, had fended for himself and was almost the oldest. Stephen had an allowance which was not large, but which sufficed for all necessities and some luxuries; Levis had only that which he earned by tutoring, and by acting as substitute instructor, laboratory assistant, and editor of the Students' Quarterly. Their acquaintance began when Stephen, wishing to win a place on the editorial board of the Quarterly, and conferring with Levis, had been invited by him to become a contributor to the next issue.

On the morning of that dismal March day Stephen sat, far from Philadelphia, in the room which had been his father's office in Chestnut Ridge, a coal-mining town above Wilkes-Barre, waiting until it was time for the train which should take him back to the Medical School which he had left to attend his father in his last illness.

He looked drearily and absent-mindedly out into the thick mist which hid all but the immediate neighborhood, a dirty, unpaved street, a stretch of sidewalk made of powdery black culm, and the front of a large dim building, the "company store." He saw not only what the mist revealed, but what it hid, a continuation of the dreary street, running between a black hill and a blacker culm bank, and terminating in a towering breaker, shapeless and hideous in design. There was no color in the landscape; all was a dense black or a soft, woolly gray. The company store had once been painted red, but the red had long ago been overlaid by black.

With him sat the superintendent of the mine, Harry Kinter, a plump, friendly young man with a pendent under lip and easy manners. He slouched, cigarette in hand, in what had been Dr. Lanfair's office chair, looking with dull, kindly eyes at his companion. He was sorry for the distressed youth and was doing his best to comfort him in a practical way.

"Now I can get the old fellow from Hazelton to come up for a couple of years, Stephen. He'll be good for that long, I'm sure, and perhaps longer. But we must have your word to settle here when you're through school; otherwise we'll try to get a permanent man. The advantage to you would be a salary from the beginning, which is what most young fellows don't get. Wouldn't you like the place for the sake of your father? Perhaps the company would be willing to pay you something to help you along if they could have your promise."

Stephen glanced toward the superintendent and then away, unable to command his voice. He was tall and thin and the looseness of his clothing and the length of his hair which he refused to have trimmed by the Chestnut Ridge barber, as well as his expression of fatigue, made him look forlorn. The offer of a position indicated a willingness of the mining company to take doubtful risks, since other lives could hardly be of much importance to one who valued his own so little.

His pale cheeks and swollen eyelids indicated not only the weariness of nights spent in watching, but a copious shedding of tears and also an acute present anxiety. Alas! it might be that he would have no other place to go, that this dreary settlement would be his sole refuge, a gravelike refuge, but a refuge none the less. If, as he anticipated, disgrace awaited him at the University, he might be only too happy to return to this inaccessible spot whither it was not likely that a rumor of his misdeed would ever penetrate, or where, if it did penetrate, it would be vaguely understood and condoned. Physicians willing to bury themselves in Chestnut Ridge were not so easily found that the mining company could afford to be fastidious.

It was not that Chestnut Ridge offered no opportunities to a physician. One could not look casually out of the window at this hour without seeing opportunities, even on a morning when most of the world was hidden from view. Four out of the ten women who stood gossiping in strange tongues before the company store—Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Lithuanian—would need in a short time the attention of a physician. The children tugging at their skirts were under-nourished. It was still too early for the men of the night shift to have had their rest and be on the street, but when they appeared their faces would show the effect of the long hours spent away from the sunlight and of the liquor with which they enlivened their periods of idleness. There was no doubt that Chestnut Ridge needed a physician.

But such work would be done by Stephen only under compulsion. Here his father had wasted his life; he had been at the call of every foreigner, had spent day after day at the squalid bedsides of suffering women, waiting upon uncleanness, and had died at the age of fifty of blood poison, contracted in an emergency operation performed hastily and without gloves, to save two lives far less valuable than his own. He had apparently not regretted his course; he had accepted his fate quietly and without complaint and had been anxious only that Stephen should understand exactly about his small inheritance. Afterwards he lay low in his bed, his hands clasped across his breast, repeating the poetry he loved, a little, lean, bearded man, with eager eyes and a heartening smile, wholly unconscious of the loftiness of his own soul.

Presently he became confused and tried to remember a formula which he frequently recited at the bedsides of dying patients, sometimes in English for Protestants, but more often in Latin for Catholics who could not be reached in time by the busy head of a wide parish. It was a formula which for him explained the world, made sacrifice easy, and a solution of all life's difficulties certain.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," he said faintly and could go no further.

He had looked at his son earnestly and Stephen had prompted him, not without embarrassment. Stephen had been trained in the principles of the Christian faith and he had believed them, but they were now with him wholly a matter of rote; religion was not, he believed, a necessity of his life.

Stephen meant to be not a general practitioner like his father, but a specialist in the diseases of the eye like Professor Mayne of the Medical School, and his ambition aimed not only at such skill as Professor Mayne possessed and such fame as he had won, but also at a similar accumulation of wealth. He did not expect to attain his end without hard labor. He was a diligent student, and he was willing to devote himself night and day to his task.

His hopes of success were not unfounded, and his unusual ability was appreciated not only by himself, but by his teachers. He had won the First Year prize, and Professor Mayne had intimated to him that of all the candidates for the position of interne at the Ophthalmic Hospital he was most likely to be appointed. Such a position as that at Chestnut Ridge should be given to a man like his acquaintance, Levis, who had worked his way through school and who had endured so much hardship that a regular salary would be desirable, even with all the accompanying disadvantages. He might even describe the place to Levis and suggest that he apply for it, or he might mention his name to the superintendent as a possible employee. He pitied men like Levis with all his heart.

But he might need the Chestnut Ridge practice for himself—let him not forget that! He rose and walked up and down the room, still without answering Kinter, who seemed half asleep.

If only he had not imperiled his future by a piece of madness! Having signified his willingness to contribute to the Quarterly, and being immensely pleased and flattered by this opportunity to shine, he was visited by the sterility of mind common to youth which has a creative task set for it. When he was summoned to his father's bedside, his article was not yet begun; indeed, he had not yet selected a subject—and he had expected to make with this contribution an impression upon the whole of the Medical School and the Faculty as well!

During an unoccupied hour when the fatal termination of his father's illness was still in doubt, he had found in an old yellowed medical journal in the drawer of the office desk, an article proposing an ingenious and at the same time unfounded and actually ludicrous theory of the origin of cancer. The magazine was published in England—he did not know how it had come into his father's possession.

The theory seemed to him novel and ingenious, though possibly mistaken; he did not realize that it was ludicrous. In one of those moments of madness which are part of youth, he condensed the article, copied it, and sent it to Levis. The act was like the occasional thefts of children who take pennies in order to buy candy and who repent bitterly and are forever after honest. He was ambitious as children are hungry; the desire for fame was his strongest impulse and he could not let pass even so small an opportunity to shine.

As he sat by his father's bedside, where stupor had at last succeeded paroxysm and the end had become the matter of a day, he realized suddenly what he had done. It may have been that the principles in which he had been trained reasserted their power over him; it may have been that his father's face, which looked in its sunken condition like the face of a tortured saint, recalled him to himself; at any rate, he saw as by a lightning flash the foolishness of his act.

Having realized his mistake, he tried to remedy it. Calling from his window to a passing miner, he sent a telegram to Levis, "Do not publish my article." In a few hours he received word that the magazine had gone to press. Levis had added a sentence at which he groaned aloud, "Article all right."

If the college officials detected his plagiarism, it would mean the end of all his hopes. Professor Mayne would no longer distinguish him by his commendation and friendly attentions; he would have no chance of becoming an interne at the Ophthalmic Hospital and thus of pursuing immediately his longed-for work; he would have to accept the position at Chestnut Ridge and bid good-bye to his proud hopes.

It might be that he would have to suffer actual punishment. The prize, which was to add a hundred dollars to his income, might be taken from him and public mention might be made of his disgrace. It would not be greatly to be wondered at if the Faculty chose to assume that all his carefully wrought papers, all his well-prepared examinations, were accompanied by a similar dishonesty.

In the midst of his distress, he realized that the superintendent had waited a long time for an answer.

"I'll have to think it over, Harry. It's time for me to start now."

Kinter rose lazily and lifted Stephen's satchel.

"You let me hear from you in the course of the next few weeks; and in the meantime we'll engage the old man for a year at least. You won't find it so dreadfully dull here, believe me. It's possible to get down to Wilkes-Barre on the evening train and back in the caboose of the freight; gives you a nice long evening. I know some girls and I'll introduce you to them. They have dances once in a while. You'll get accustomed to it. I have. I guess diseases are pretty much the same as mines, alike everywhere."

In the train Stephen sat close to the window, a forbidding shoulder turned toward a possibly loquacious seat-mate. His very heart was sick, but he fancied that it was his body, made so by the motion of the car. Usually he enjoyed the ride, first through the region of breakers and culm banks which took on a weird picturesqueness on a bright day, then along the upper reaches of the Susquehanna and the narrow defile through which the Lehigh passes at Mauch Chunk, and into the farm lands farther down. He liked also to note the changing speech, the foreign tongues in his own neighborhood, the broad Pennsylvania German at Allentown, the less accented speech near Philadelphia. But to-day nothing engaged his attention but his own misery.

On the news-stand in the station in Philadelphia he saw the Students' Quarterly. He was tempted at first to pass quickly by and thus put off for a while the final realization of his shame, but he bought a copy and walked through the station to a bench so placed that he could turn his back to all the world. When he sat down he found that he was holding his breath, though suspense was not exactly his condition of mind, since suspense implied some hope, and he believed that there was none for Stephen Lanfair.

Then his lips parted and his eyes dilated and a deadly paleness spread over a countenance already white. The day of miracles was not past; God did not mean him to be destroyed.

He found the article, "A New Theory," and his name "Stephen Lanfair." He found under his name a note: "This article is not original, but is an abstract of a mistaken and amusing but ingenious treatise by John Dalling, a famous London physician. It was first published in England in 1837." The note, a reader would have said, was placed there by the contributor himself.

Saint Elizabeth, finding in the fifteenth century the loaves in her apron turned to roses in answer to her prayer, may have been surprised. Stephen Lanfair, finding a similar benison in the nineteenth, was stupefied.

When the machinery of his brain began to operate, he tried to fathom the mystery. He had not written the note himself, that was certain—some good angel in the guise of a critic had saved him, and the only person through whose hands the manuscript had passed was Edward Levis.

Having crossed the city he knew not how, he found Levis in his poor room. He was as thin as Lanfair and looked, with his black beard, twenty years older. He took off a pair of large spectacles and bade his guest sit down. Stephen remembered having heard that he had been a foundling, brought up at Girard College.

He did not answer Levis's greeting, he simply held out the magazine.

"Did you put that note in, Levis?"

Levis flushed. His nature was one of intense reserve and he anticipated and deplored the unpleasantness of a confession. He believed that he understood the boyish rashness which was to blame for Lanfair's mistake, and he had added the note for his sake as well as for the sake of the magazine.

"I saw you had forgotten it," said he lightly.

"Did you know the real author?"

"Yes. I saw this article alluded to humorously long ago in Thurber's textbook and I looked it up. The old magazine is on file here."

"It is commonly known, then?"

"Yes, I should say so, as a sort of absurdity. You see, of course, that it is an absurdity."

To this Stephen made no answer. He would have proved himself a fool, then, as well as a knave!

"Do you think many persons beside yourself would have recognized it?"

"I think it likely, and of course one would have been enough. It was all right for you to send it in, though; it has roused a great deal of interest; it shows we have a sense of humor. I was very sorry to hear that you lost your father, Lanfair."

Stephen would have liked to lay his head on Levis's shoulder; instead he laid it on Levis's desk.

"I didn't mean to add a note," said he in a thick voice. "I meant to pass it off as my own. I have been a dishonest fool."

Levis stirred uneasily.

"We all have to learn lessons."

Stephen was crying like a child.

"Don't, my dear fellow," said Levis.

Stephen lifted his head.

"I promise you that never in my life will I do anything of this kind again. It's nearly killed me. If my father had known—I don't know what he would have felt or done or said. He would have been heart-broken. When I'm tempted to do anything wrong, anything of any kind, I'll think of you. I promise you faithfully!"

Levis smiled.

"Promise yourself, Lanfair!"

Stephen remembered at the end of the week to write his decision to Kinter. He would not need, thank God, to go to Chestnut Ridge and fix his eyes for the rest of his life upon the dirty street and the dismal breaker and the ignorant, unclean women who were so often and so direly in need of waiting upon! He thought of his father with an almost intolerable tenderness of heart. His father had suffered everything, cold and weariness and loneliness and hunger of mind, separation from all that was interesting and profitable, and finally martyrdom itself in a ghastly form. His father was a saint; he would always remember him and love him, but he would not need to follow exactly in his footsteps. He would have a career of which his father would have been unspeakably proud; he would establish principles by which the whole race of eye specialists would be governed; he would have an immensely wide influence, and it would all be his father's doing.

He told Levis about the position, feeling a little ashamed, and was relieved when Levis explained that he had agreed to take a country practice in Lancaster County.

He was given the next day new reason to expect success. Professor Mayne summoned him to his desk at the end of his last class and congratulated him upon his answers in a recent examination. Mayne was as large in body as he was in estate and his manner expressed his opulence. He had a full round voice, he used long words deliberately and with perfect correctness, and spoke with an old-fashioned rhythm, which accented now important, now unimportant words, as though he obeyed some queer quantitative law. He seemed to be health of body and mind incarnate, but an inherited susceptibility to mental disorder had forbidden his continuing his race. Life, he believed, was on the whole hideous if one stopped to consider it; but clever men did not contemplate it, they simply secured for themselves all the pleasures of the eye and the mind and the body that it was possible to get without transgressing the laws of health and common sense.

Sitting at his desk, dressed in broadcloth, he looked pleasantly at his pupil. Stephen's appearance had improved; his hair had been trimmed after a homely bang-like fashion then prevailing, sleep had refreshed him, and only the black band on his sleeve distinguished him as one afflicted. His eyelids were no longer swollen and his eyes had resumed a natural brilliancy which drew attention away from his somewhat attenuated features.

"I was interested in your contribution to the Quarterly, Lanfair. Where did you discover that antediluvian absurdity?"

"In an old magazine of my father's." Stephen could not suppress the tears which burned his eyes. His relief from anxiety softened his heart and the least expression of sympathy made him almost hysterical. "He had evidently kept it because it was a curiosity. He was a great reader. I didn't know that attention had been called to it in Thurber's textbook until Levis told me."

"We cannot be reminded of a good joke too often. I had forgotten it entirely. Continue your general reading; it will eventually prove profitable to you, no matter what department of medicine you select."

Then, remembering that Lanfair's father had just died, Professor Mayne invited him to dinner. His niece was to go with him to the theater and they would dine at six o'clock at the New Windham Hotel. His carriage was outside the building. Lanfair might just as well accompany him now. Stephen followed down the hall, his heart thumping.

His heart beat still more rapidly when he was seated opposite to Mayne and next to his niece in the hotel dining-room. The girl, Hilda Fell, was a little creature in exquisite clothes who looked up from under a pair of brows which almost met and which gave to her face a willful and imperious expression. She was very young and light as thistledown and was already spoiled by wealth and idleness. The men whom she had known hitherto were familiar with her type, but Stephen was not; he thought of her as a charming princess, and when her bright eyes met his, he looked back into them smiling, and not recognizing the intense and somewhat unwholesome curiosity about life which animated them. He had frequently heard of her as an orphan with a large estate of which a great stone house on the river front in Harrisburg near the governor's mansion was only a small part. She was an object of interest to the students who knew her by sight and who discussed endlessly her wealth and her fashionable clothes and admired her free manners. There was a current rumor that she smoked cigarettes, a habit then almost unknown among women.

Professor Mayne teased her and she answered saucily. He deplored his own ill fortune, and still more that of this little creature in whom the taint of insanity was darker than in himself. He believed that his sister, Hilda's mother, would have developed, if she had lived, a serious melancholia ending possibly in suicide for which the family history furnished abundant precedent. He was convinced of the present soundness of Hilda's mind, but with him and Hilda the family must end.

He looked at her and young Lanfair earnestly. Lanfair was ambitious; he would improve and develop, and to him certain matters could be explained. Before they parted he had invited Stephen to his house.

Stephen went from the hotel table to Levis's room. He asked merely to sit there with his book before the fire, which was the only means of heating here where living was cheap. He was like a child who finds assuagement for hurt in the silent company of an older person.

Levis smiled and went on with his work. It was not often that students sought him out merely for the pleasure of his company and he was touched by this youthful devotion.

Nor was it often, at least during his occupancy, that a girl's figure and a pair of dark eyes were visualized against the background of the old mantelpiece. Levis himself did not give one hour's thought in a year to women; he believed that he was growing too old for love-making and that hardship had made him immune to love. Certainly there was no profit in thinking of a state of matrimony into which one was too poor to enter!

Stephen contrasted his fearful anticipations with what had actually occurred. He had expected to be by this time disgraced and despairing. Instead he was at peace. He had been more honored than he had dreamed of being, and now a new and wilder possibility dazzled him.

His thoughts recurred to his father, and he dwelt with gratitude upon the self-sacrificing care which had always been his. If his father had been willing to provide less generously for his education, to stint his pocket-money, or to leave a smaller inheritance, he might have had a larger library with which to make Chestnut Ridge tolerable and an occasional journey for diversion or improvement. He might even—Stephen flushed a little as this notion came into his mind—he might even have contracted a second marriage, his first having ended tragically with Stephen's birth.

Stephen avoided thinking of the piety which was after all his father's distinguishing characteristic, even though he was aware that his father would rather have bequeathed to him faith than money, and that his effort to recite the Creed was not a last reassurance to himself as it had seemed, but a final reminder of the faith without which he believed his son would perish. Stephen saw him clearly as he lay in his bed and heard his voice reciting the treasured verses which he had memorized in dreary journeys over the bleak hills. The lines which he repeated most often acknowledged with what was to his son a ghastly frankness his dire plight:

"In the hour of death, after this life's whim,
When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim,
And pain has exhausted every limb—
The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him."

He resisted not only this memory, but others, a tiny, dismal schoolhouse, half filled by a little flock of mourning women and children bereft of husbands and fathers by a cruel death; he saw weeping eyes and sad faces in which apathy had followed tears. He hated all sorrow and trouble and he connected religion with them. Religion was for the old, the dying, the afflicted, the needy, and he was none of these.

He looked from time to time gratefully at Levis bending over his books. Whatever good fortune should be his, Levis should share. Levis had saved his honor, had saved him from pitfalls for the rest of his life. He would never, never forget him.

For the most part, however, he thought of himself, of his excellent marks, of his grasp of the subjects which he studied, of admirable Professor Mayne, and especially of Professor Mayne's niece. He had, he was sure, the ordering of his life in his hands; he could make it what he chose.

CHAPTER II
ELLEN REFUSES TO HEAR A CALL

Outside the Saal or meeting-room of the old Kloster all was hot and bright in the sunshine. The thick grass in the enclosure which surrounded the group of strangely fashioned buildings was ready for cutting, the foliage was at its greenest. Ellen Levis could see between the two wings of a bowed shutter the sloping plot and half of a willow tree whose plumy branches hung motionless in the still air. She could see also sheep feeding in the fields across Cocalico Creek and in imagination she played with them and with herself a childish game, making a silly wager that a certain black lamb would come again into sight before Grandfather Milhausen had finished his lengthy exposition of trine immersion. It was Saturday morning when most children were, like the lambs, at play, all but the children of the Seventh-Day Baptists.

Presently, when her eyes grew tired of the glare of sunshine, she turned them upon the scene nearer at hand.

In the meeting-house all was cool and dim. A soft golden light fell upon the worn benches, the long tables running the length of the room, the pulpit covered with a white homespun cloth, the ancient stove. All was old and strange and brown with the stain of time. Hung upon the wall, close to the heavy beams of the ceiling, were crumbling paper charts with intricate and graceful lettering which had been made in 1740—it was natural that now, after almost two centuries, the inscriptions should be faded and dull.

The congregation sitting motionless in the shadowy place had an unearthly aspect. There were three young mothers, with heads bent in somnolent maternity above the infants in their arms; there were a few older women whose heads were likewise bent; there were half a dozen men; and last of all, a few children, dressed like their fathers and mothers in clothes which betokened indifference to changing styles.

Only Ellen Levis and her brother were clad in any modern fashion. Their mother, long dead, had been a Seventh-Day Baptist and their father, who was not a church member, not even a worldly Lutheran, sent them to the meeting at the Kloster because of a promise made to her.

The two children, Matthew, a sturdy, blond boy of sixteen, and Ellen, who was almost two years younger, sat a little apart from the others, Matthew with his arms folded like the brethren, and Ellen close beside him. Sometimes she laid her head for a moment on his shoulder. She was a child of intense affections to whom the sight and touch of the beloved object gave unspeakable satisfaction. Matthew was to go to school in the fall to study medicine and at the thought of separation from him tears came into her brown eyes.

The meeting seemed interminable. It was not always possible for the little flock to gather together on the Seventh Day, and once assembled they communed long together. This evening after the solemn ceremony of Foot-washing, the Lord's Supper would be celebrated, as was proper, as an evening feast.

The attendance was comparatively large, all that remained of the Ephrata flock having gathered, as well as a few members from Franklin and Bedford Counties; and Grandfather Milhausen, feeling the occasion to be important, was delivering himself of the fruits of a lifetime of meditation. He proved the necessity of baptism; he proved that baptism by sprinkling had no warrant in Scripture; he dwelt in conclusion with passionate outpouring of words upon the efficacy and comfort of trine immersion.

His voice, now loud, now soft, kept throughout a monotone. His hearers grew drowsy, slept, woke again, changed their positions, and slept once more. The little black lamb came again and again into the field of Ellen's vision, fifty accurately counted automobile horns sounded from a curve near by, and each member of the congregation was in turn gazed at and meditated upon.

"I like Sister König because she is so very fat and when she is not in meeting she smiles pleasantly.... I pity Brother Reith because they had to take his wife to the asylum, but I do not like him.... I pity Sister Herman because she had to be baptized in the cold creek last winter. I should choose the summer. I should"—there was a slight admonitory motion of the shoulder against which she leaned. But she was disturbed only for a second; then she settled her plump body still more closely against her brother's arm. He was tired, she was sure, and she was very, very tired. Grandfather's eyes, lifted a moment ago toward the ceiling, were bent now upon his congregation. He must see that they were tired, that they longed to go, but he took no heed of their misery.

Once more Ellen returned to her musing. She journeyed through the strange old building, passing from the meeting-room into a kitchen where, long ago, meals were prepared for visiting brethren, and climbing up into large empty lofts which had been their dormitories.

Then she sped in imagination out the door of the meeting-room and across the angle between the Saal and Saron. In Saron had lived a conventual sisterhood, young women who had left their fathers' houses, and older women who had left their own homes and their husbands and children, to pray, to spin and weave, to letter the old charts, and to sing morning, noon and midnight, strange, attenuated music from a latticed gallery.

The old building was an enchanting place—if only one were sometimes allowed there alone, so that one might dream without the guiding admonitions of Grandfather, to whom these women were all saints. Here were old spinning-wheels and a curious tower clock which struck the hours, and pieces of pottery and old books and still other elaborate charts. Climbing a narrow, winding stairway, one came to tiny cells where the sisters had slept on narrow benches fastened to the wall, with blocks of wood for pillows. Ellen pictured them lying stiffly; sometimes she imagined them falling with a crash from their narrow couches; sometimes she fancied herself pursued by them, and taking refuge with Matthew or her father. They wore, she seemed to remember, thick white dresses, tied about with ropes. The poor things lay now, dead and done for, in the little cemetery between the meeting-house and the road.

After a long time she resumed her meditations upon the subject of immersion.

"I would not like to be baptized when the water was high, either. I would do like Millie König"—her eyes turned toward one of the youngest of the sisters, a girl about Matthew's age, with a meaningless, saintlike beauty. "I would take a nice day like Millie." She looked again at the downcast eyes and the crossed hands. "I hate Millie," said she calmly. Then her weariness became acute. It was dreadful to have to sit here while the world went on, dreadful, dreadful. She began to pity herself and saw her whole life wasted.

Suddenly she was acutely disturbed. It was not alone the admonitory motion of Matthew's shoulder; it was the preacher's eyes, bent directly upon Matthew and upon her. She sat upright. Something was going to happen after all—she anticipated that it was something more trying than the monotony.

"There are those in our midst who should be of us," said Grandfather, with jealous passion. "The children of a good mother who was a Seventh-Day Baptist should follow in her footsteps, should go down into the cleansing flood and there wash themselves clean of sin, should make a fresh start in the world, should put upon themselves the badge of separation. They have heard the call many times; they must be no longer disobedient to the heavenly vision. Brother Matthew, Sister Ellen, is it well that you should postpone what is right for you to do, that you should longer reject the peace of God?"

Ellen's head turned sharply, her eyes seeking her brother's. A shaft of sunshine fell upon his thick, light hair and across his smooth cheek. For a long time he did not answer and an awful fear began to take shape in her heart. Was he not going to answer, to get somehow between her and the dreadful eyes, the deathlike beard of Grandfather? Still he sat motionless.

Grandfather lifted his arms in supplication.

"Father in Heaven, Thou that takest care of the least of Thy children, Thou who rejoicest over each lamb brought into the fold, help us in this hour!"

Ellen leaned forward and grasped the edge of the seat with both hands. Was not Matthew angry, would he not be angry, would he not take her and himself away from this glittering, searching eye? She thought with sick longing of her father, so comfortable at home, or riding to see a patient. No one would dare, she was certain, to talk to him about his soul, or to suggest that he should take off his clothes and put on a long black robe and kneel in Cocalico Creek and let Grandfather dip him back and forth! Neither would Matthew submit to such indignity. Outraged and insulted, she tried to find his hand to assure him of her sympathy.

But her hand was not taken. Matthew sat motionless staring at the floor. Her eyes sought the watching faces. Mothers had lifted their heads, the few fathers in Israel bent forward. Sister Herman was crying. Sister Millie's eyes were different from the rest; their expression was sharper and more eager; they were hungry eyes, bent upon Matthew's thick, light curls. Without understanding, Ellen hated her even more vehemently. Her hand, creeping into Matthew's, would not be withstood.

"Oh, Matthew, let us go home!"

Holding her hand, Matthew rose. It seemed that only the blood of his mother filled his veins. The love of the soil was in him and of the heavy, unthinking, comfortable life which his mother's people had lived for generation upon generation, life founded upon a conviction that in the next world all would be well. He could not remember his mother, but he had thought much about her.

He took now the most important step of his life. Inclination, inherited tendencies, and a piety, deep and authentic, though narrow, indicated his path.

"I have thought about these matters for a long time," he said slowly. "I believe that we should be baptized by trine immersion, that there is no salvation outside it. I believe that we should observe the ordinance of Foot-washing because our Lord commanded it. I believe in the holy kiss and in the communion. I believe we should be a separated people and that we should keep the peace, not going to law, and not making or engaging in war, and observing temperance and charity. I am ready to be immersed when it seems best. I am—"

But he could say no more. Even so well thought out a declaration proved difficult to deliver. Sister Herman began to sing, a high, shrill song, not the strange part singing of a century and a half ago, which had become merely a tradition, but a modern revival hymn,

"The Lord's my strength,
In Him I'll trust,
A Shelter in the time of storm."

Sister König joined and the tenor of Brother Amos fell in. Brother Amos, a nephew of Grandfather Milhausen, was only twenty-one, but he was a school-teacher and had already been appointed a preacher.

The music caught Ellen by the throat; it seemed to drown her in thick, overpowering emotion. An inner voice admonished her to yield; that it was easier to yield, better to yield, to give up one's own desires, one's own will, to walk in an appointed path. Matthew grasped her hand closely and then laid his other hand upon it. He was undemonstrative and his unwonted gesture softened her heart still more. For him she had fetched and carried all their short lives; he believed that she would obey now as she had always obeyed, and he would bring her into the kingdom.

Grandfather had not finished his appeal. He looked down at Ellen and it seemed that his bright eyes burned her through. She thought of a dreadful picture of God and the judgment, she thought of every wrong she had done; of disobedience, of impertinence to the housekeeper, of excursions into forbidden books, of wandering thoughts in meeting. She heard him plead, she felt Matthew's hand clasp hers still more closely. Like Matthew she was compelled suddenly to decide, but unlike Matthew she had not thought on these things, and except in amused speculation the possibility of being immersed or of baring her feet before the women had not occurred to her.

Then Ellen made the choice by which she was to abide. The blood which flowed in her veins was different from that in her brother's; the paternal inheritance was paramount, the choice was, after all, made for her. Though Matthew's caress thrilled her with delight, she rose unsteadily. She saw in all eyes a pleased conviction that she was about to imitate him; she noticed for the first time that Amos's eyes could gleam like her grandfather's, and she trembled. Standing for a moment she was a pleasant picture, a round and still childish figure whose future appearance was not to be certainly prophesied, but possessing two features whose beauty would be for years to come certain, thick, curly, brown hair, now braided primly, and dark eyes shaded by lashes so black that they seemed immeasurably deep and tender.

Suddenly she felt wings given her. Out of the brown shadows, across the shaft of light which illuminated the bent, blond head of her brother with a symbolism marked by the congregation, she fled. The sunlight, the green grass, the trees, now waving in a gentle breeze, and most wonderful of all, the unlimited blue sky, seemed to hold out welcoming arms. She began to cry and to run as she cried. She feared that she might be pursued. Though she was not afraid to drive Matthew's young horse, she did not think of taking him, but sped on foot up Mount Zion toward the bounds of the enclosure, across the site of a more ancient church to the hill-top. There she usually looked down through a thick bit of virgin woods toward the smoothly flowing Cocalico, and beyond to pleasant Ephrata. But now she opened the rude fastening of an old gate, and ran across a field past a tall monument, toward a pair of arms of whose welcome she was certain. There was peace, and not in the dim cavern from which she fled!

CHAPTER III
TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME STORY

After Ellen had beaten her way with gasps for breath up the slope beyond the meeting-house, she slackened her pace. She began to doubt pursuit, and besides she could now trust to her power of swift locomotion. For a while she kept inside the fences on the grass borders from which a dash into the wheat would have been easy, but after she had gone half a mile she wormed her plump body between two spreading rails and took to the road.

The sense of escape from prison was not new; many times when church was over she had looked up and round at the arching sky and the waving trees and had danced her way out to Matthew's buggy, and sometimes, from behind the safe shelter of its curtain, she had made atrocious faces at the back of Millie König's sleek head.

Presently, her joy at having escaped was tempered. She did not like to have the brethren consider her wicked. But penitence weakened and finally faded entirely away, its departure hastened by reflections of a nature common to mankind. Millie had copied her sentences in school—it did not make much difference what Millie thought of her. Brother Herman was notorious for his keenness in trade and he had cheated her father when he sold him a horse. As for Grandfather—she was sorry to hurt his feelings, but Grandfather was old. It is very easy to be good, Ellen believed, when you are old.

Suddenly the full import of the morning's events was clear to her. She was free, but Matthew was in prison! As she walked on she began to cry again. Perhaps he would let his beard grow until he looked like Grandfather and Amos and like the pictures of Father Friedsam and Brother Jabez and all the worthies of the past. He would not belong to her; he would belong to all those grim and pious people. Most dreadful of all, he would belong to Millie. At this, she stopped short in the road, remembering Millie's possessing eyes.

Again she began to run, dashing through the little hollow made by the creek, where the odors of fresh earth and the intense sweetness of elder blossoms would at any other moment have made her loiter. The creek bounded her father's farm and, taking a short cut, she left the road and crossed a meadow and then ran along the edge of a field of corn until she came to a gate which let her into the yard.

The Levis house was one of the large, many-windowed brick houses common to the neighborhood. It was built solidly and its correctness of proportion gave it a comfortable beauty. The porch was not a part of the original structure, but had been added, as running water and other conveniences had been added within. Behind the house stood a large barn. The place had not the trim look of adjacent farms; there was a good deal of brush along the fences, the fences themselves needed rebuilding and the woodwork of the house needed paint. After looking carefully at the premises an observant person would have made up his mind that the owner was neither by taste nor by inclination a farmer.

The property had one glorious beauty, the thick and lofty grove of oak trees which stood behind and above the house and barn. They were a landmark for miles. In them hundreds of birds nested and squirrels played and scores of little creatures had their homes. In spring anemones and hepaticas were to be found beneath them and nowhere else in the immediate neighborhood; in summer they spread a thick canopy of shade, and in autumn they burned with a glowing red. In them in all seasons the wind spoke continuously, now in a whisper, now in thunderous diapason.

Dr. Levis sat on the porch of his house, his pipe in his hand, his tall, thin figure comfortably disposed in an old rocking-chair. He had long since got rid of his black beard, and he looked, if not younger in body, at least younger in spirit, than in the days of his friendship with Stephen Lanfair. This morning he had seen a few office patients and had paid the two visits which were all that were needed by his healthy clientèle, and he was now waiting comfortably until the rural mail carrier should leave his newspaper.

He received little mail besides his papers and magazines and an occasional printed notice from the University. A connection with one's Alma Mater soon lapses when one has formed no close friendships, and he had formed but one. He looked very sober when he thought of Stephen, not chiefly because Stephen had forgotten him—he was a boy with a boy's short-lived enthusiasms—but because Stephen had succeeded so well and he had succeeded so little. The possession of a fair practice, a productive farm and two fine children might be thought to represent a sufficient attainment, but there was in his heart a bitter sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment. He had been tricked, bewitched; forgetting his superiority and immunity to love he had married soon after leaving the University, and had thus fettered himself for life.

He heard the first thump of Ellen's small but heavy shoes on the porch steps and moving with the physician's swift response to sounds heard during sleep, he sat upright, his pipe slipping from his hand. Then, seeing that it was only Ellen come from church, he sank back and closed his eyes.

"Are you back? Come pick up Father's pipe and tell him about the sermon."

Rendered speechless by the consciousness of her misery and of her tear-streaked face, Ellen moved no farther, and hearing no advancing step and feeling no warm creature against his knee, Levis opened his eyes.

"Why, Ellen, dear, what's the matter? Why are you home so early? Where's Matthew? Come here quickly!"

Blinded afresh by tears, Ellen started toward her accustomed sanctuary.

"What a heavy Ellen it is! Is there anything the matter with Matthew?"

Ellen shook her head. There was nothing the matter with Matthew in the sense in which her father spoke, yet there was everything the matter with him.

Suddenly tears seemed an inadequate expression of her trouble. Her father's face, seen above hers, was pitying, yet a little amused. The woes of childhood were so small—he wondered whether it was a sick kitten or a lame horse that had stirred Ellen's tender heart.

"Now, Ellen, tell me what is the matter."

Ellen sat up and dried her eyes on her father's large, smooth handkerchief. She remembered—oh, blessed relief!—that of course her father could stop Matthew. Matthew was to go away to learn to be a physician; he could not be a Seventh-Day Baptist!

"I ran away from meeting," she confessed, feeling the first doubt of her course.

Levis's face was grave, but his eyes twinkled.

"Why?"

"It was so long and I got so tired looking at half a tree and a little grass, and at the brothers and sisters and Grandfather's white beard."

"Why, Ellen!" Levis frowned, not in anger, but so that he might concentrate both physical and mental vision upon his daughter.

Now Ellen revealed the heart of the trouble.

"Grandfather preached at Matthew and me!"

"Oh, he did!"

"Yes, and Matthew made a speech about believing in everything. He's going to be immersed, Father, and he will be at the Foot-washing. They wanted me to, but I ran away. I couldn't stand it."

"Why couldn't you stand it?"

Ellen laid her hands across her plump body.

"It makes me feel all tight here. And I couldn't bear to take off my shoes and stockings."

"No," answered Levis. "I should think you couldn't! Can you remember just what was said to you and Matthew?"

"Grandfather said we ought to come to the meeting and get into the cleansing flood. It was very dark and uncomfortable."

"And what did Matthew say?"

"He said he'd been thinking about these things for a long, long time and he thought it was all right. Then they sang about a shelter and they prayed over us. Grandfather said we were the children of a good sister."

Levis put Ellen off his knee and began to walk up and down the porch. He knew his own origin as little as he knew the origin of his unusual name, which the neighborhood turned into Lewis, but he believed himself to be entirely Anglo-Saxon and he hoped that his children were Anglo-Saxon rather than Teutonic. Left alone, Ellen ran after him and took his hand and walked with him, a quaint imitator of his step and carriage.

"Can't you stop him, Father?"

"We shall see."

"If you told me to stop it—that is, if I were doing it—you know I'd stop, don't you?"

"Yes, Ellen."

Ellen tightened her hand on the three fingers which it held.

"I'll never do what you don't want me to do."

Levis made no answer, but exchanged the three fingers for a whole hand. After a while he stopped walking long enough to light his pipe. At that moment a buggy turned into the lane, not the well-painted, swiftly moving rig of Matthew, but an older vehicle in which the housekeeper had driven to town to do her Saturday shopping. Levis provided ample transportation for all his family.

"She's coming, Father," said Ellen in a whisper.

Levis stepped off the porch, calling, "Home so soon, Manda?" and received a solemn nod from a large, white, and somewhat reproachful face. He went round the house and down to the spring house and up a slope into the woodland which was his pride. There he sat down on a fallen tree and bade Ellen sit on a stump opposite him. She smiled and blinked her reddened eyes. It was her favorite spot and she liked to have her father here with her.

Suddenly Levis leaned forward. Ellen's news shocked him into the recollection of important plans, sometimes dreamed of and smoked over, sometimes forgotten for long periods, sometimes recalled with a pang of self-reproach, and again forgotten. It was his fault that Matthew had impulsively committed himself to this foolishness—the separation from Grandfather Milhausen, which would be complete in the fall when Matthew went to school, should have been brought about long ago. Ellen showed more common sense, but he had neglected her also, and for all her protests she might hold some of these foolish ideas. He had meant long since to take her education in hand. Amos Milhausen's instruction was good as far as it went, but it was now inadequate. He began to her astonishment to ask queer questions.

"How many bones are there in the human body?"

"I don't know. I think Matthew knows."

"What is the shape of the earth?"

"Round like a ball and flattened at the poles."

"What are the poles?"

"I don't know."

"Why are the days shorter in winter?"

"I don't know. Matthew knows."

"Are you going to let Matthew do all your knowing?"

Tears came again into Ellen's eyes. Matthew had abandoned her.

"I'm at the head of my class," she boasted in feeble self-defense. "I can write good compositions and do any kind of examples and I'm excellent in geography."

"I should think it would be a very simple matter to stand at the head of your class!"

"It is," confessed Ellen. "I don't work hard at all."

But now Ellen worked very hard. In the next half-hour her father drew from her small head all the knowledge which it contained and tried to find a great deal more than had been put there. A few times, for sheer nervousness and shame, she cried. The amount of her knowledge seemed infinitesimal, the abyss of her ignorance unfathomable. It was all the more humiliating because when the catechization was over, her father started to the house without reproving her for her dullness. It was hard on one who had prided herself on her brains!

Matthew returned, driving slowly, a grave expression on his handsome face. Having unhitched his horse he came round to the porch where the flutter of a short skirt vanishing indoors did not escape him. He was deeply angry with the anger of a superior toward an inferior or an elder toward a child. He could not understand Ellen. For the first time in her life she had not been willing to go his way, and she had marred what would otherwise have been a perfect experience.

Hitherto he had not thought much about his father or his father's convictions, his father's neglect of church having been a condition with which he had always been familiar, but now it seemed unnecessary and wrong. Realizing in his new devotion that it was his duty to admonish his careless parent, he prayed for opportunity and strength.

The three Levises ate their dinner silently, the housekeeper sitting with them. She had, seen close at hand, an air of patient endurance under affliction. She had expected, according to custom, that the man of whose house and children she had taken such good care for so many years would marry her, though she had already been married twice and was somewhat older than he. She had even, being hopeful of Dr. Levis, discouraged the advances of a neighboring farmer. The short lives of her two husbands and the oaklike hardness of Levis made her lot a very disappointing one. Having just heard of the marriage of a friend, she was more than usually depressed, a condition which did not escape her master, to whom her mournful disposition and her extraordinary combinations of English and German were sources of deep and silent amusement. He could not always remember her expressions, but Ellen could repeat them at length. "Unsere number iss 1 long and 2 short and sis very hart zu's distinguishe," she would say into the telephone and be perfectly understood by the person at the other end. Or, "I sink it will give rain," or, "Ach, Ellen, what do you make, then!"

At another time, with amused recollection of Mrs. Gummidge, Levis would have rallied her back into cheerfulness, and, unconsciously, into some hope, but to-day his thoughts were upon his own affairs. He did not hear when she invited him to a second helping of potatoes, a piece of absent-mindedness which seemed insulting and which would furnish her material upon which to brood through the long afternoon.

When dinner was over, Matthew followed his father to the porch. Levis looked at him curiously. He had something to say to Matthew, but it seemed also that Matthew had something to say to him! Matthew took his seat in a rocking-chair, and another prayer for strength concluded, spoke.

"Father, Ellen behaved very badly in church."

"Ellen told me about it," said Levis.

"She ought to be punished."

"That is, she told me her side of it. Perhaps you'd better tell me yours."

"Well, Grandfather made a fine address about immersion. Then he said that since we children had such a good Christian mother, we, too, should be immersed and come into church. I said that I would. Then he spoke kindly to Ellen and she got up and ran out in a senseless way."

"Ellen was frightened."

"She's old enough not to be frightened. She has an immortal soul. She should have obeyed me. And you have an immortal soul, Father," said handsome Matthew. "Would you not become converted and be immersed? It is a very blessed condition."

In delivering this quotation from Grandfather, Matthew's voice had a slightly hollow ring, as though even he were aware that the situation had unusual aspects.

Levis rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Suppose you come into the office, Matthew," said he crisply. "It will be easier to talk there."

Within doors Levis walked up and down. He did not seem to belong here in this country office, with its simple fittings, its serviceable but unmodern appliances, its outlook on farmland; he belonged in a city where he could attend fifty instead of five patients in a day.

"Matthew," said he frowning, "until this morning, it never occurred to me that it would be necessary to speak to you as I am going to speak. But I've been overreached and deceived. I don't blame you; you too have been a victim. If you're old enough to take the stand which you took this morning, to describe the convictions of your heart before strangers, you're old enough to hear what I have to say.

"You have always had smooth sailing; you can't understand what it means to be without living kin, to be bound out, to suffer intentional or unintentional slights, to have always to overcome difficulties, to deny yourself a little more when you've already next to nothing, to be cold and hungry and miserable. I wouldn't wish you to know; I want never to think of the miseries of my youth. I've done my best to shield you from all hardships; but it won't hurt you to know that such hardships exist.

"Through it all, I was determined to be a physician, and that is what I succeeded in becoming—older than most men when I graduated, but eternally grateful.

"I came into this neighborhood to begin a practice, or rather to take a practice temporarily. I didn't expect to stay beyond a year, but I married here and your mother would not leave."

For a moment Levis paused and looked out at the fields and the woodland and the empty sky. Old conflicts in which he had lost, old miseries, old thwartings came back to him, and especially, painted against the woodland, a face, exquisite in line, delicate in coloring. The face before him resembled it in outline and in expression.

"After she died, I couldn't go away because of you and Ellen. I couldn't take you, neither could I leave you; so I stayed here. I've brought you up according to my best judgment, and I've made you good children.

"Before your mother died, I gave her a promise. She was concerned that you should be 'saved'"—Levis's voice laid a lightly scornful emphasis on the "saved." "She held the strict notions of the Seventh-Day Baptists, and I promised I'd do nothing to alienate you from her father and would let you go to church. It was foolish, but your grandfather promised to exact no religious vows from you. I felt that his promise was unnecessary. I didn't dream that children brought up in a household where English was spoken, with books at hand, would return to the fifteenth century!"

"The Gospel is the same now," said Matthew neatly.

"I agree with you. Everything is the same as it has been, always." Levis spoke with sarcasm. Then he went on—"You can have no deep conviction of sin. You have committed no great sin."

"You don't know my heart, Father!"

"I know you and your heart. I've had you under my eyes ever since you were born, and I know you're neither gross nor wicked. You can't be repentant except in a sentimental, superficial way; neither can you know that the doctrines of the Seventh-Day Baptists are right and others wrong. You know no others."

"I—" began Matthew.

"You're under my control, you're supported by me. You'll go to college in September as we planned and then to the Medical School, and when you're through you shall decide about the Seventh-Day Baptists. If your religion is what you think it is, delay will make no difference; it will rather strengthen you. This will be a test which you should welcome."

"I do welcome it, Father."

A slight contraction of the muscles changed the expression of Levis's face. Meekness—that was one of the weapons of Abraham Milhausen's daughter!

He felt an almost irresistible desire to pour out upon his boy all the heretical beliefs, all the unorthodox speculations which had for years filled his hours of meditation, to fortify him with skepticism against the foolish hopes built up by the Christian religion. He believed he had, like the Stoics, the possession of his own soul. Once he had expounded his convictions to the boy's mother and she had withdrawn herself physically and mentally until she died. But the world would take care of Matthew!

"You don't suppose that all wisdom is incarnate in Grandfather, do you, Matthew?"

"He's only a human being," answered Matthew, with the same trying neatness of response. "But even children can understand all that is necessary to be saved."

Levis rose.

"Well, my boy, when things begin to seem puzzling to you, your father may be able to help."

Matthew rose also. He was tired and he had many things to think of. He looked at his father with strong disapproval; he thought of Grandfather's saintliness and the pretty face of Millie König. His father lit a cigarette; it was as alienating an act as could have been committed.

"I think Ellen should be punished for disturbing the meeting," said he. "It shamed me for her."

"I'll attend to Ellen," promised Levis with a satisfying grimness.

But, having reached the doorway, Matthew suffered misgivings.

"You don't mean that I'm not to go to church at all?"

"Not to the Seventh-Day Baptist church."

"Not this evening!"

"Not at all," was the decisive answer.

Having opened his lips and closed them, Matthew withdrew, backwards, and went upstairs.

CHAPTER IV
A SLUMBERING TERROR

It was not because of ingratitude or altogether because of forgetfulness that Stephen Lanfair had neglected his friend. Their association had continued as long as circumstances made the seeing of one another possible. When the longed-for interneship was won, Levis had been for two years out of the Medical School and Stephen was preoccupied with the straight, dark gaze and free and saucy manners of Hilda Fell. After Hilda had seen him, she had, for reasons as yet unexplained by psychologists, forsworn all other company. He was awkward, he knew none of the lively give-and-take of her set, he was grave in manner and thought; but she would have no other. Her passion for him assumed an ominous intensity; she was happy only when she had before her a definite prospect of meeting him, she was unhappy when the character of the meeting was such that she must share his attention with others.

Mayne related frankly the history of his family, but Stephen found in that no impediment to marriage. The insanity appeared—at least he received that mistaken impression—invariably in early youth. Apparently Hilda's mind was sound. Her education had not been of a very solid quality; in fact, she could do little more than write a presentable note and she did that as seldom as possible, and of general information she had none. But Stephen believed that association with him would largely supplement her knowledge. He believed that Mayne had not given her the proper sort of education and that she would learn from him with delight. He could not know or dream that the slightest opposition, even the thwarting of her whims, would reveal her fundamental instability. Until now life had brought everything to her; it had demanded no adaptations on her part.

He explained to her new and interesting cases which came under his eye, entirely unaware that all her enthusiasm for his profession had its origin in his arm across her shoulders. It was when he was discussing his work that Stephen was at his best.

His marriage, consummated at the end of his course, seemed to him an incredible piece of good fortune. A poor man from a little coal region town, he had none of the wealth or influence which he had always supposed must, even in America, be the contribution of the bridegroom to an alliance with a name so important. He visited before his graduation the gray house in Harrisburg and saw in the city the solid business block, and outside the city some of the farms which poured their revenues into Hilda's lap. He believed himself to be lifted by fortune high above the average of mankind; not only above the great level mass at the bottom of the social pyramid and the dull, superimposed layer which he had learned to call bourgeois, but also above the stratum of educated men and women who lacked comfortable wealth, and above the stratum of rich men and women who had no intellectual pleasures. He had, he believed for a month after he was married, everything.

He began then dimly to discern the chasm which divided him from Hilda. His keen mind, delivered from its first blindness, could no longer fail to see that her ignorance was not the result of a poor education, but of natural inability to learn. She failed to grasp the simplest of scientific principles; she could not understand the structure of the eye or remember its chief parts; she made Stephen ridiculous by misquoting him.

He dwelt a little longer in the paradise which he had created for himself. It was absurd to require in an exquisite creature like Hilda the interests natural to an older woman or to a student. Compared with the young women whom he had known in the University, she was immeasurably attractive and she could not be expected to possess every perfection.

It was not long, however, before he understood clearly that her dullness to the passion of his life, his profession, was due not only to ignorance but to indifference. Their first quarrel was precipitated by his announcement of his plans for the future.

"New York is the place for us to live. Each country has one center; England has London, France has Paris, and the United States has New York." Stephen often spoke in this sententious fashion in his youth. "There the world currents—"

"But we are not going to live in New York," said Hilda quickly.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to. I'll go there for a few weeks as often as you like in the winter, but I'm going to live in my own house. In New York you're nobody unless you're worth millions and millions; in Harrisburg you can be somebody for a good deal less than that."

"In Harrisburg!" Stephen was not aware of his absurdity until Hilda pointed it out to him.

"I should think that any one who had lived in Chestnut Ridge with a breaker before the door would find Harrisburg heaven!"

Stephen flushed. He had poured out to her in a moment of unique confidence a description of Chestnut Ridge. With it he had told her not only about his father's life, but about his death, and it was unfeeling to recall the conversation in this scornful fashion.

"I have my living to earn!"

"Your living!" repeated Hilda. She uttered a delicate and good-natured pleasantry. "I thought you married me for that!"

Stephen made no answer. After a while, when he could go without seeming to be angry, he left her on the porch of the hotel where they were spending their honeymoon and went to walk alone. He was shocked, amazed, even appalled.

Once more and only once he broached the subject.

"I am exceedingly anxious to do well in my profession, Hilda," he said earnestly. "New York is the only place where a man can really have a brilliant success."

Hilda shook her head.

"I've made my plans."

In the end, after six months abroad, Stephen hung out his sign upon the Manning Street wing of Hilda's house and there practiced his profession for seven or eight months in the year. The other months he spent in her train, journeying from one fashionable American and European resort to the other. During these excursions he was idle except for stolen visits to clinics and lectures, and he was constantly unhappy. He still had faith in his own powers and he realized that his best years were passing and that other men and even younger men were winning honors which should have been his. He knew that Hilda believed that she had made generous concessions in allowing him to practice at all. He knew that her friends—though her associates could scarcely be called friends, so light were the ties that bound them—thought him exceedingly lucky, but he believed that his colleagues held him to be a fashionable quack. He held himself to be the most unhappy of men.

Further opposition to his wife's decisions was impossible. He learned before the second month of his married life had come to a close that a woman given to hysteria could not be argued with, could not be made to see reason. His ambition was, he knew now, stronger than his affection and he would never be able to gratify it. He came to envy quiet, poor men like Edward Levis, especially those who remained unmarried, who could live their lives in freedom.

He had one or two grossly unpleasant quarrels with Hilda. Once, after she had laughed at his awkwardness in the presence of an acquaintance, he took her to task for a habit which he found more and more odious.

"The boys at the University used to say that you smoked cigarettes, but I never believed them."

They were alone in his bedroom—whose bare floors and almost blank walls acted as sounding-boards for Hilda's shrill denunciation of his prudishness. Terrified, he closed the door quickly.

Within a year her malady took a not uncommon form. He had been, he realized when the ugly scene was over, very stupid not to have recognized earlier the obsessive jealousy and rage which she must have felt for some time, but he had not dreamed that the young nurse in his office, who was pretty, but ignorant of everything outside her profession, could have attracted more than a casual glance. When Hilda began to accuse him, he listened dumfounded, on his cheek a gray paleness which added ten years to his age.

As he listened to her coarse tirade, the shrill accents seemed to ring like an unpleasant soprano aria against a clearly accented rhythmic bass, the voice of Professor Mayne. He had received the impression from Mayne that the family malady never appeared after early youth, but had he understood him aright? Horrified he looked into an abyss to whose precipitous wall he had come blindly, but with the blindness of a madman or a fool.

"But, Hilda," he said slowly, "I am married to you."

Hilda uttered a laugh which expressed hideously a variety of emotions—mollification, for his dismay was disarming; amusement, for his innocence was laughable, and even a little shame. Stephen's mind was clean; he looked at her as his good father might have looked.

For a short time she seemed a little disturbed; she regarded him with uneasy inquiry as though she suspected his horror and his inability to forget her outbreak. But he found presently that she watched the coming and going of his patients and that she interrogated his employees with such clever slyness that they did not know they were being questioned. Her jealousy noted only the women with whom he was connected professionally, especially those who were alone with him in his office, and between them, young, middle-aged, or old, she did not distinguish. His dismay at her ignorance had not escaped her; it was the center of her consciousness, the idée fixe of her madness. She misinterpreted the present and falsified the past, ascribing to Stephen infidelities in the days of their courtship. Her obsession was hideous, but by no means unprecedented; frequently the newspapers rejoiced in the airing of similar or more sordid cases. Recently an innocent patient waiting in a doctor's office had been shot dead by a suspicious wife.

Mayne, hearing his story from a terrified Stephen, grew white, then shook his head. He laid the case before his intimate friend Dr. Good, who was an alienist and brought him once or twice to Harrisburg to spend the night. It might be necessary eventually to have Hilda go—Dr. Good always put his prescriptions as delicately as possible—to a sanatorium, but there was no immediate danger. Mayne breathed more freely, and only Stephen knew by what eternal vigilance over himself and her the peace was kept, or apprehended the unpleasant and even perilous results which might follow upon its breaking.

His life was not entirely without pleasures, unhappy as it appeared to him. After the first rush of Hilda's fashionable acquaintances, who came filled with curiosity and went away baffled and irritated by his gravity and silence, there applied a more desirable clientèle. He treated the poor in the city hospital, serving them with a pleasure which he did not analyze, but which had its source partly in the satisfaction of returning some of the service which hundreds of working men and women poured out upon Hilda and her kind, and partly in a deep and unrecognized discontent with his own life. He thought often of his father with a childish turning to the one human being who had loved him deeply and unselfishly. He believed that he still regarded his father's devotion to others with impatience, his life, based upon a simple and childlike sense of duty, as wasted. He did not know that unhappiness had begun to alter the opinions which were the product of youth and good health and material prosperity.

He performed cures which astonished himself. A Mrs. Fetzer, a plain little Pennsylvania German woman, suffered at the hands of a drunken husband a gunshot wound in her face, and he was called to the hospital when it seemed that the sight of both eyes was lost. A nurse, Miss Knowlton, who had frequently attended his patients, faced him one day with defiance and told him that she was going blind and that according to half a dozen doctors there was no help for her. A Miss MacVane came to his office and laid her case before him—she was a private secretary with no other means of support than her own earnings, and her eyes were failing.

He saved one of Mrs. Fetzer's eyes and found for her a place in his house, of which she gradually took entire charge in a manner which suggested now a guardian angel, now a watchful dragon. He cured Miss Knowlton and she replaced a younger nurse in his office. Miss MacVane became his secretary; she could not be entirely cured, but with expert treatment and unremitting watchfulness she might retain a measure of vision for a long time.

He thought, grimly contemplating his assistants, that Hilda could find no fault with these ladies. Fetzer, as Hilda called her after an English fashion, was irremediably disfigured; the insertion of an artificial eye was out of the question and she wore a black patch. Miss Knowlton was tall, her features were large, her red hair was no Titian glory, but was thin and pale, and she had pale blue eyes and skin without color. Miss MacVane was short and heavy and her dim vision increased her natural awkwardness. All three women were of the type by which the world's tasks are accomplished, who take little or no recreation, who do without all luxuries, who desire apparently but one reward, the consciousness of duty done.

Stephen's sense of safety, however, was founded upon a mistaken analysis of Hilda's jealousy. He did not realize that she attributed to him no lust of the eyes, that she believed that it was intellect only which attracted him. She hated Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane and every one with whom he talked about his profession. She hated even Fetzer, though she could not do without her.

He had begun, not without a chastening recollection of his first contribution, to send articles to medical magazines, and he believed that if he could have a year uninterrupted by idle journeying he could produce a valuable work on infectious diseases of the eye. When his first article was finished he thought of sending a copy to Edward Levis, but Levis seemed as far away as his father, and he could not renew the acquaintance in so informal a way. He would some day—no, soon—look him up.

Life had still other satisfactions. A sense of his own ignorance and lack of early opportunity kept him constantly seeking for education. He was interested in art and music and in sciences other than his own and he tried constantly to increase his information about them. During his early married life he had bought a small original painting and Hilda had expressed her approval—it was, she said, a more becoming fad for a gentleman than diseases. He had then ceased to buy pictures until his own income warranted it.

He might have found congenial friends—the city was not inhabited entirely by men and women of Hilda's type—but he knew that his friends could not be hers. It was better to avoid all social connections than to rouse groundless but hideous suspicion.

As the years passed it seemed likely that Hilda's malady would grow no worse. Her uncle felt no more anxiety, and Stephen relaxed into a certain peace of mind. He became thirty-five, then forty. He believed that the course of his life was laid out, and that, unsatisfying as it was, it was still happier than that of the mass of mankind. There were moments when he said to himself that there was no reason for his existence or that of any one else, that human life was ephemeral and purposeless; but he put aside quickly all metaphysical speculation because it recalled his father's last hours and the deep concern in his sunken eyes.

CHAPTER V
LEVIS SPEAKS HIS MIND

Levis was the only member of his family who had a great deal to say on the Sunday following Matthew's declaration of faith. At meals Matthew ate with his eyes fixed upon his plate, and Ellen wiped away an occasional tear. Several times since the sad events of yesterday she had tried to open the door of Matthew's room, to tell him that she was sorry she had made him ashamed and to lay before him the reasons for her conduct, but the door was locked. Lying in wait outside had been productive of no better results, for, appearing at last, he had quietly brushed her aside. Manda was more mournful than the young people. She did not weep, but the tip of her nose showed that she had wept in the recent past.

When supper was over, Levis addressed his family, one after the other.

"Matthew, what are you going to do this evening?"

"I'm going to bed," answered Matthew in a low tone. "I promised to help with the wheat in the morning. Soon it will be a loss."

Levis's eyes twinkled. Matthew had lately shown an inclination to observe that his father's methods of farming were not those of the thrifty neighbors.

"Manda, where are you going?"

"In my church," Manda answered in a tone at once humble and reproachful. She was always a person of few words, but her ability to express a variety of meanings with a H'm or with the valuable So! of the Pennsylvania Germans made a large vocabulary unnecessary.

Again Levis's eyes twinkled and again he thought of Mrs. Gummidge, ever mourning for "the old one."

"And Ellen?"

Ellen's tears refused to be longer restrained. She rose from her chair and went to her father.

"Matthew won't speak to me. I went up seven times to tell him that I was sorry and he wouldn't open the door."

Levis led Ellen into his office.

"Matthew is best left alone. He'll come round, never fear! I have a visit to make which will keep me out till after dark. There is a book and Matthew will hear you if you call. If you get sleepy, go to bed."

Levis kissed her and put on his hat and went away. He did not carry his satchel of medicines nor go to the barn to put his horse into the buggy, but walked down the short lane to the road. Ellen watched him until he reached the gate, and stood for a moment listening to the church bells in Ephrata. When he went on his way, she turned with forgetfulness of all troubles to "David Copperfield." The first paragraphs puzzled her, but she did not linger. Mercifully, one did not need to understand everything in a book in order to get intense enjoyment out of it.

Levis retraced Ellen's journey of yesterday, except that he climbed no fences, but kept to the road until he reached the strange group of old buildings in the hollow, now more uncanny than ever in the twilight. They were entirely dark, and about them in his imagination ghosts seemed to wander, some of them saintly and all pitifully deluded. These old buildings had trapped him; entering them from curiosity soon after he had taken the practice of the old doctor, he had come out bewitched, unable to free himself, the course of his life changed.

Midway between an outer and an inner gate he stood still. He was in the little enclosure beside the public highway where for a hundred and seventy years the Seventh-Day Baptists had buried their dead. Here were no ornate monuments, but a few rows of simple stones, some sunk deep into the soil. One, a little larger and whiter than the rest, seemed to invite contemplation. Levis glanced at it, hesitated for an instant, and then went on. He knew well how unimportant are the remains of mortality and that it is mockery even to pause beside a grave in which lies the object of a love, extinguished not by death, but by life. The shadowy stone recalled not grief born when Mary died, but miseries struggled with long before.

As he passed through the second gate he heard voices. Beside the tall, steep-roofed buildings stood a little cottage where lived Grandfather, the guardian of the property, and Amos, his nephew, protégé, and familiar. Pleased with the attendance at yesterday's meeting, the two sat together on the porch, now for a long time silent, now in earnest conversation. There was now no prophet's fire in Grandfather's eyes. He sat comfortably in an old armchair, the wristbands of his unstarched shirt turned back over his coat sleeves, his loosely hanging hands, his air of negligent repose suggesting the portraits of the aged Whitman.

He spoke rapidly and easily, the young man more slowly and in a questioning tone. The prophet's mantle seemed to Amos a heavy robe, though his piety was sincere and he looked, even more than Grandfather, the part of saint. His features were beautifully modeled; his thick and curling hair was worn a little long, in faint imitation of the pious hermits of long ago. His slightly parted lips and wide gray eyes gave him a look of expectancy which was the expression of his hopes. He anticipated that the faith which filled his soul would be quickened by mystical visions. It had been so in this holy place, it would be so once more. Grandfather had assured him of it a hundred times.

Grandfather believed that in establishing in Amos a preoccupation with spiritual things and with his own soul, he had done him an inestimable service, but to Levis this preoccupation was unwholesome and unpleasant. He felt contempt for Amos and avoided whenever possible the sight of his feminine beauty. Neither Levis nor any one else had realized that Amos, with his magnificent frame, his delicate beard, his long hair, his literary aspirations, and his formal meditations, was not tragic nor profound nor despicable, but perilously like a figure of comedy.

The two did not hear the closing of the gate, and the end of their discourse came distinctly to ears already burning.

"It is a fine thing for us that young Matthew has taken this stand. I'm not afraid for the little one—it was doubtless conviction of sin which made her run away. I will see her alone, and then she too will come into the fold. It has been distinctly prophesied to me in dreams that with you three anything might be done, Matthew the head of a secular congregation, you of a restored brotherhood, and Ellen of a sisterhood."

Levis laid his hand on his heart in an habitual and, almost invariably, an unconscious gesture. The blood seemed to beat behind his eyes and in his throat. He had never been so angry.

"It comes to me sometimes that my life was all wrong," sighed Grandfather. "In my youth I had a call to remain single. But I was like others—weak. When a Seventh-Day Baptist shall show by his life that he really believes the assurances of God, then the Spirit will descend in rich measure, and we shall have again our hundreds devoted to prayer and to good works."

A flattered Amos tightened the grasp of one hand upon another. He knew that he was the foundation upon which his uncle's hopes were built, but he had never heard it so plainly stated. He felt his heart burn, he seemed to see a light over the steep roof of the Saal, and he believed that a higher authority than his uncle was going to communicate with him. Then he saw a tall man approaching from the gate.

"There is some one here, Uncle."

"It's Levis," said a crisp and angry voice. "Father Milhausen, I want a few words with you."

"Sit down, Edward," said the old man.

"I'd rather talk where there's a light." Levis tried to keep his voice steady. He did not mean to have any of his words go trailing off into the darkness without hitting their mark. Moreover, he meant, if need be, to quarrel and perhaps to storm, and he did not think it decent to quarrel so near the white tombstone.

"All right, I'm willing." The old man rose. "Amos, make a light."

The coal-oil lamp revealed a little room which was at once kitchen and sitting-room. It contained a stove, now cold, a table, a shelf holding Latin and German books, and another holding specimens of ancient pottery. All was bare and neat.

The human element was far more interesting than the furniture. Old Milhausen stood for a moment stroking his white beard. His dark eyes, half covered by heavy lids, looked downward without seeing—he was praying for wisdom. Amos stood close to the table fitting a shade over the glaring light.

"Perhaps I'd better go," said he humbly. "I don't wish to be where I have no business."

"There's no reason why you should go," said Levis lightly. "I'd like to have you hear what I say, so that there may be no misunderstanding between any of us." He sat down in a plain wooden chair by the table and Amos sat down on a bench on the other side.

Grandfather opened his eyes, having been assured, in some fashion which he understood, of help from on high. He saw that his son-in-law was angry and he determined to quiet him if possible. Edward was not one who bore the dispensations of God easily.

"This has been a very pleasant—"

Levis had not come to talk about pleasant things.

"I don't like discussions and quarreling," said he. "I have not had a bitter word with you since the hateful scene you forced upon me at Mary's bedside, but now you have brought about the occasion for another scene.

"I promised Mary that the children should not be influenced against her religion, and that I'd let them go to meeting. I've kept my word partly because I usually keep promises, but more because I didn't believe that two children brought up in this century in my house would accept the teachings of your sect. I"—Levis raised a silencing hand. Grandfather smiled, then, instead of going on with the remark which he had tried to begin, he hid his lips—"I still don't believe it, even though Matthew came home yesterday thinking he was 'converted.'

"While I've kept my promise, you've broken yours. Yesterday, publicly, you called on two impressionable children, hypnotized by darkness and heavy air and too much vague preaching, to confess the most foolish beliefs. You did worse than that—you put them into a position where it seemed wicked not to confess them. I don't doubt that Matthew would give anything in the world to forget that he made such a conspicuous fool of himself. Fortunately Ellen was more frightened than impressed.

"What I have to say about the matter is this—Matthew is going to college in the fall and until then he will come no more to church. If after he has been at college and medical school, he chooses to believe as you do, you may have him."

"I'm not afraid for Matthew," said old Milhausen. "I was bidden to break my word. I had plain directions."

"You see nothing Jesuitical in that, I suppose? Well, neither am I afraid for Matthew. Now about Ellen—"

"I'll say no more to Ellen," promised Grandfather uneasily. Ellen was far more than Matthew his darling, the delight of his eyes.

"That is so; you will not," agreed Levis. He rose and took his hat from the table. The others rose also, Grandfather towering above the younger men. Deeply disturbed, he tried to fathom Levis's meaning.

Amos understood Levis. He had watched Ellen since she was a baby; he had seen her growing toward womanhood and he believed that he loved only her soul.

"What are you going to do about Ellen?" he asked.

It seemed for a moment that Levis meant to brush by him without answering. Then he said to himself that it was just as well to let Grandfather and this saintly young whipper-snapper have their just deserts together and at once.

"Ellen will come no more to meeting. You have had your chance at her now during all her most impressionable years, for which I blame myself. I should have broken my promise long before you broke yours."

"God Almighty will require her soul of you!" Grandfather's calmness vanished, he spoke with gathering power and shrillness. "You came here a stranger, you beguiled my daughter, she married you against my will and against her conscience, but she saw very soon that there was no joy in such a marriage. She gave me her children as a holy gift, and if I died without knowing they were safe, I couldn't be happy in eternity!"

"They're my children as well as hers," answered Levis. "I have just as keen a sense of responsibility as you. You've had more than your share of their souls. You've taught them superstition, now I'll teach them the truth."

"Superstition!" Grandfather made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the dim old buildings. "What do you believe, Edward?"

"I believe in an undefinable creative power," answered Levis sharply. "As for revelation or miracles or immortality or divinity come to earth—they are delusions created by the imagination of men as panaceas for the fear of death."

The old man clasped his hands, anger transmuted into terror.

"Immortality!" he repeated. "You don't doubt immortality?"

"I think we shall be immortal as part of the revolving earth."

"Will you tell Ellen that?" asked Grandfather in a whisper.

"No," said Levis. "If Ellen has as good a mind as I think she has, she will find all that out for herself. Good-night."

Amos barred the way to the door.

"We will pray for them and you," said he.

"I have no objections," answered Levis. "Pray away!"

When the door was shut, Amos saw that Grandfather was weeping.

"Don't worry, Uncle," said he. "Matthew is safe. I'm confident of it. And Ellen will come to school for two more years. She will not forget."

"He came into our meeting from curiosity. He took all I had. He made her like a mad creature; she had only one thought and that was to be with him. But she was punished, poor, poor Mary! and now she is sanctified."

Amos's cheeks burned again. He was curious about such madness.

"They didn't live long together?"

"Four years. At first he was determined to go away, but this Mary resisted. She was like the Anastasia of whom our records tell. The better spirit had begun to work upon her and she knew that if she went from the shelter of this place she was lost."

"I'm not afraid for these children," said Amos again.

But he spoke absently. When the old man had gone to bed, he went outside and walked up and down in the thick grass. After a long time, when it was so late that passers-by were few and no headlights cast their glare over the little cemetery, he passed through the gate and stood by the white stone, thinking of the cousin whose beauty he remembered, in whom love was a sort of madness. Yet religion had been more to her than love! A dreadful word which Levis had used tempted him—was she not a fool to give up love? It seemed to him that the fragrant night was resonant with voices, calling vaguely and unhappily. He looked down upon the white stone and traced with his hand the inscription which he had read a thousand times:

Mary
Wife of
Edward Levis
Daughter of
Abraham Milhausen
Aged 25 years

Suddenly he shivered. The tradition of hearts unsatisfied was more potent than that of the peace of the saints. Then he went indoors and prayed God to forgive him. It was his object to keep himself unspotted, to guard his soul unceasingly. His ignorance of the world was well-nigh unlimited.

Levis walked back more rapidly than he had come. It was against his habit to think much of the past, and now the future held a new interest. It was a relief, moreover, to have spoken his mind, and because of it he felt greater toleration for Grandfather. For beautiful Amos he continued to have only contempt. He wished that it was already September so that he could send Matthew away.

Another educational project he meant to put into execution at once. He went whistling up the lane, noticed without pausing the blackness of the woodland and the slender moon hanging above, and pushing open the door found Ellen asleep, her book clutched in her arms. The light was burning dimly and beneath it lay a note:

"I did not go to bed because of the 'phone. Matthew is asleep. I listened at his door."

Levis stood and looked down upon plump Ellen. Her cheeks were flushed and beadlike drops stood upon her upper lip. Her curls had come out of their ribbon and clustered about her face; her relaxed body seemed tall. Levis drew up a chair and sat down to a closer contemplation. She bore no resemblance to her mother—Matthew had the maternal inheritance. In spite of her discouragement over yesterday's quiz, she had exhibited a surprising maturity of mind.

At this minute she stirred and smiled and appeared for an instant to lose her childishness in a riper charm. Tears filled her father's eyes. Perhaps he should yet have companionship in his own household!

Presently he turned to look round the room; then he rose and brought from somewhere in the house a little table and set it by the window. He went out again and reappeared with a handful of books, worn and dog-eared, and sitting at his desk, looked through them; then taking a sheet of paper wrote several lines upon which he seemed to ponder. He glanced at Ellen as though he meditated rousing her to aid in this planning, but thought better of it, and laid books and papers and two carefully sharpened pencils on the little table together.

Then he lifted Ellen herself. Before he reached the doorway she opened her eyes drowsily.

"Oh, it's you!" said she heavily and with deep content.

He was not yet through with his family. Coming back into his room, his hand again pressed upon his side as though Ellen's weight had exhausted him, he found a figure, large, bonneted, with hands humbly folded. He had a dreadful fear that Manda meant to announce her departure.

"Well, Manda!"

"I have something to say," said Manda in her humblest tone.

"Sit down, do."

Manda shook her head. There were proprieties to be observed by a widow in her position and she knew them.

"I should be called Mrs. Sassaman," said she. "I don't mind Manda, but it is as if I had lost respect for him."

Levis suppressed a hysterical impulse.

"Of course you shall be called Mrs. Sassaman!" said he. "We have all been thoughtless."

When she had gone, he lay down upon the old sofa, still showing the impress of Ellen's body. He had thought of himself till this moment as a young man, but a man is young no longer when his son sets up his will against him. He looked age in the face; he remembered the senility through which many pass to their end. Then he turned his cheek against the pillow which was warm and a little damp. It somehow comforted him.

CHAPTER VI
STUDYING IN VACATION

Anticipation of some unusual happening woke Ellen early on Monday morning. She lay for an instant staring at the whitewashed walls, at the carved pineapples tipping the posts of her huge bed, and finally at a picture above her bureau in which General Washington, in red trousers, a sky-blue coat, and white wig, bowed to the admiring applause of a large throng.

She sat up, clasped her hands about her knees, and looked down upon the wheat-field where already the first swath had been cut by hand and where the reaper, driven by Matthew, was about to begin its more rapid work. At once she sprang from bed. It was Monday and a harvest day and Manda would be cross. Saturday and Sunday had been, in spite of their woe, interesting, but to-day promised only dullness.

But to-day was to have an interest of its own. She washed the dishes and peeled a mammoth bowl of potatoes, then she made up the beds, spreading the covers with care and beating the pillows vigorously. When she had finished, she heard her name called and went down to the office. Her father sat at his desk, a score of little white papers before him on each of which he was laying a bit of powder from a wide-mouthed jar. He seemed to fit in less well than usual with his surroundings, the old book-cases, the rag carpet, the worn furniture.

"Shut the door, Ellen."

Ellen did as she was bid. She lifted a corner of the ugly gingham apron which hung far below the bottom of her skirt and wiped her perspiring face. It was exactly a gesture of Mrs. Sassaman's.

"Take your apron out to the kitchen!" Levis spoke with unreasonable sharpness, not toward Ellen, but toward the apron.

"Now, Ellen"—when the last of the little powders had been folded—"I don't believe that all mental activity should cease because the weather is warm. For two hours each day—morning or afternoon or evening, whichever pleases you and Mrs. Sassaman—you are to sit on yonder chair and study. Each day I shall set you a lesson which you must have ready by the next day. The machinery in your head is good, but it needs steady use. First we shall have an examination. I've marked on that paper a number of sums which I selected from your arithmetic. There are twenty of them. Then here"—Levis opened a little book—"is something new. It's absurd that you shouldn't have been taught about your own body. To-morrow morning at this time, I'll expect you to tell me about these ten pages and to show me your examples. Get them done neatly."

Ellen grew pale with the intensity of her emotions. The lesson seemed long, but she was not one to hesitate when things were hard.

"But I will get ahead of my class! I don't know whether Amos will like that, Father."

"His likes or dislikes make very little difference."

"And Matthew will think it's silly. He says that when girls get learning they are like peacocks spreading their tails in the air."

"In spite of Matthew we shall proceed."

Thus encouraged, Ellen crossed the room and laid her books and paper on the little table. "Example 4, page 50," she wrote, referring to her father's list. Then she put the tip of her pencil into her mouth and laid herself bodily upon the table.

Levis pushed under her feet an old ottoman.

"Sit up, Ellen, sit up! And never put anything but food into your mouth; no pencils or fingers!"

Ellen flushed. She was often offended by the habits of others; she now saw herself sprawling, and blushed scarlet. With the blush her childish unconsciousness of self vanished.

"And don't chew your tongue, my dear!"

"I won't," she promised, deeply mortified.

Example 4, page 50, was promptly finished and ruled off, and Example 8, page 58, was begun. Levis fetched the morning paper and the mail from the rural delivery box and sat down to read. It was only eight o'clock, and he did not start upon his round till nine. Sometimes he glanced toward the window where the scholar labored, jerking herself frequently into the upright position which she had momentarily lost, and striving with many backslidings to control the motions of a tongue which had hitherto assisted in all mental processes. Presently Matthew, covered with dust and grime and perspiration, exhibited with stoical pride a cut hand. Frowning, Levis bathed and dressed the injury. The clean hand and the white bandage looked out of place.

"Matthew, this is entirely unnecessary."

"The wheat must be cut."

"There are enough people to cut the wheat. We had better lose a part than have you hurt your hands."

"It is nothing," protested Matthew.

"This work hardens your skin and a physician can't have hard hands. Get a bath and change your clothes and don't go back."

"The men expect me back!"

Levis made no answer, and Matthew went out sullenly. He thought that Ellen was being punished for yesterday's misbehavior and felt somewhat mollified. But he wanted to go out to the fields. The men would laugh at him. He didn't care about his hands and he was determined not to be a physician.

"I could make more money farming than Father does doctoring—a great deal more. I don't want to go away; I want to stay here."

After changing his clothes, he sat by the window. His room was on the opposite side of the house from the wheat-field and the men would not see him. It was bad enough that they should see his father idling. And Ellen should not be writing; they would think that she was playing. A host of angry protests crowded into his mind. He had been for a long time critical of his father and now his father's opposition to the true religion gave him the right to express his disapproval.

He reached out and took his Bible from the little stand. It had been given him by his grandfather, who had marked many of the passages, and he turned from page to page. There was one verse about being persecuted and reviled for conscience' sake which he smoothed with his hand. Other verses came into his mind about separating one's self from one's family on account of their disbelief. He saw himself a hero, admired and set on high by the church people. He might leave his home and go to live with Grandfather. He thought of Millie whose eyes gleamed at him so pleasantly and so strangely.

But before he had got beyond the most vague of speculations, he found himself rising from his chair in response to a summons from below. Even yet his father lingered!

"Matthew," said Levis cheerfully, "I think that you, too, should do some studying. Here is the University catalogue showing the character of your examinations. Get your books together and after dinner we'll go over the subjects and see whether you are entirely prepared."

"I have all my examples done already," announced Ellen proudly at this ill-selected moment. "Now I'm to study physiology."

Matthew flushed. So Ellen had not been punished at all! And he was to be set down beside a baby to study in vacation. But again he moved obediently.

The examination proved that Amos had done his work well. Matthew's mind, if mechanical in its operations, was tenacious of that which it had once grasped. Mathematics he found difficult, but not impossible; German was one of his native tongues; Latin had been easy, thanks to the fact that some of the early writings of the Seventh-Day Baptists were in that language and that Amos, poring over them, had acquired thorough knowledge and had imparted it to his pupil. In elementary science, he was not well prepared and his father made ready to remedy the deficiency.

"We can easily rig up a little laboratory, and when you see these experiments and perform them, you won't find them hard."

"I don't see any use in it," complained Matthew, almost in tears.

"But you will. And you must do more English reading. Both you and Ellen use abominable idioms. Here are a dozen prescribed books."

"I don't like to read," said Matthew. "I don't believe it's meant for us to read much except the Word of God."

Levis looked at his son with an intense, satiric amusement. But he made no comment. In a few months Matthew would be sitting under teachers whose elaborate astonishment at stupidity Levis remembered. He would like to hurry him away to-day. He needed to see himself as others saw him; he needed to meet amused and astonished eyes, to hear the smothered laughter of fellow students at his boorish ways. It could not be that the boy was irreclaimable who yesterday was playing with his blocks on the floor!

"You'd better go to your room, Matthew. You should study four or five hours a day and you're likely to be interrupted here."

Matthew went slowly upstairs. For a while he sat idle; then hearing his father's voice, he opened his books. They proved hateful; a few weeks without mental effort had made thinking difficult. He heard Ellen, now that her father had driven away, chanting the names of bones and he shouted fiercely to her to be still. He was even young enough to shed tears. Then he prayed for strength to bear the extraordinary burdens of his lot and it seemed to him that his task was lighter. Once, lifting his eyes from his book, he looked steadily for a long time at the wall. He was following a pleasant train of thought which had for some time received a subconscious attention. He was planning what should be done with the farm if he had it. It was a delightful occupation.

After dinner Ellen, who had hitherto always obeyed Matthew and every one else who had given her commands, ceased her singing and studying and went upstairs, creeping softly on hands and knees. It could not be that Matthew would continue "mad" much longer. At other times he had been angry for a day and a night, but now a day and a night had passed. Unfortunately she did not let her approach be known and Matthew, looking up from his meditations, saw her standing in the doorway. As much startled and alarmed as though she had read his thoughts, he flew into a rage.

"You sneak on me, do you? I just tell you this, Ellen, you'll get your punishment, never fear! A girl to run out of church and refuse to listen to the words of her good grandfather! You know what happens to bad people—that will happen to you unless you repent. The Bible says we shan't have anything to do with people who don't do right. I'll speak to you, but I won't have anything more to do with you until you say you are sorry for the way you acted. Get out of my room!"

Ellen got out quickly and went down the stairs. In the office she hid her face in the pillows of the old sofa. She understood now that the house was divided; she felt division in her own heart. The teaching of the Seventh-Day Baptists was the only religious teaching she had ever had—perhaps Matthew was right. Then what would become of her father who did not go to church? And what would become of her who fled from church?

CHAPTER VII
AN EVENING PILGRIMAGE

That Grandfather would give up the children without a struggle was unlikely. When a month had passed and they had not reappeared at service, he went to visit his son-in-law, taking Amos with him. It was Sunday evening and the church bells were ringing. He carried a long staff, and looked, with his silvery beard and his unearthly expression, exactly like the early pilgrims, worn by vigils and fasting, who had set out from this spot in summer's heat and winter's cold to gather into the Net of Heavenly Wisdom all who were willing to be caught therein. Across this undulating land, then thickly forested, had traveled not only Seventh-Day Baptists, but Moravian and Mennonite, Dunker, Quaker, and New Mooner, all on journeys which were concerned with the salvation of souls, all anticipating the coming of the Celestial Bridegroom. They had not walked on a smooth road comfortably as did Grandfather and Amos, but with sandaled, stumbling feet in narrow paths, from which they stepped to let pass a single Indian warrior or perchance a horde going noisily to Lancaster with squaws and papooses, worn old horses and dirty impedimenta, to exchange, for a few hundred pounds, mountains and valleys, great rivers and dense forests.

Grandfather walked silently, his head bowed, and Amos, stepping behind him at the approach of a team, kept that position, his head bent like the old man's.

The beauty of the evening weaned Grandfather for a little while from his anxiety. The wheat was gathered and in the barns, the corn was taller than his head. Over everything streamed a golden light like the imagined light from the portals of the heavenly city. He had often fancied himself laying down his earthly burdens on such an evening, and he had long desired to go. He was desperately tired of life with its complications and unaccountable contradictions. For an instant he wondered whether any future could be better than one of entire rest and blankness of mind, of such sleep as visited the very weary—heavy and uninterrupted by dreams.

Then, with horror, he drove away such speculations. Was he to lose in a moment's doubting in his old age that heaven which he had desired from his youth? Moreover, the most important duty of his life still lay before him, the strengthening of the young in the faith so that the truth should not be left without witnesses. There was Amos of whose devotion he was sure, but the life of a single man was a slender barrier to set up before the waves of indifference and disbelief which were engulfing the world. If he could not count upon his grandchildren, there was no one left. He gauged with a keen eye the quality of the rest of his flock. Feeling suddenly the need of an assurance from his solitary disciple, he called Amos, who stepped to his side, pleased to obey promptly.

"Amos, it will not be long till I am gone."

"Don't say that, Uncle!"

"It is so in the nature of things and I would not have it otherwise. I intend to leave you so that you will need to feel no anxiety about your daily bread. What else I have will go to my grandchildren under certain conditions and some also to the fund to help the repairs. It is a heavy responsibility you have on you, but our founder said that wherever there is a man who has a receptive mind there will the Spirit enter in."

Amos's golden head bent humbly.

"I have no ambition to be prominent, Uncle. I wish there was some one else."

"There is no one else. Besides, you have been trained; there is no one but you to decipher the old writings. If anything should happen to me suddenly, it will be your duty to look after these children. It is my firm belief that Matthew is ours without any question, but it is different with little Ellen. You have her in school; everything will rest with you."

Amos's delicate skin showed a bright color even in the gathering twilight. He had begun to believe that he had unsuitable thoughts about Ellen, that he had noted with unseemly keenness the changes in her youthful figure. It would be sad if at last temptation should come to him in the form of sweet little Ellen, his pupil! He believed that thus the devil answered his desire to remain celibate. Before he had formed this intention, he had not been troubled. He did not quite hold with St. Chrysostom that a woman was a wicked work of nature covered with a shining varnish, but he did believe that she was a serious obstacle to the spiritual life.

There was a light in Dr. Levis's office where he sat reading. Ellen had gone with Mrs. Sassaman to her church, and to their surprise Matthew had brought round the double carriage and had taken the driver's seat.

Levis called "Come in," without laying down his book. When he saw his guests, he sprang up and pushed out two chairs. Now that Ellen was studying and Matthew had gone to the Lutheran church, he felt a little pity for Grandfather Milhausen.

"Sit down," he invited. "This is a very pleasant evening."

The circumstances of his visit to the Kloster were now reversed—it was Grandfather who had no desire to discuss the character of the weather, and to his son-in-law's remark he made no reply. Levis looked at him critically. He must be considerably over seventy, but he might live to be a hundred.

Then Levis looked at Amos whose beauty though unpleasant was extraordinary—what a sensation he would create among artists!—he might even, with his aureole and his silky beard, produce a sensation upon a city street. Levis wondered with amusement what Amos would say to a suggestion that he allow his body to be made a delight to the eye for centuries, like that of a certain youthful model of St. John.

Grandfather clasped both hands over the head of his stick and leaned forward. His keen eyes fell upon the book which Levis was reading—he knew enough of books to be certain that this was no religious work.

"Edward, I have come to speak again about the children for whom I am accountable. I didn't believe you when you said they shouldn't come to meeting. It seemed that you could not be guilty of such short-sightedness and wickedness."

"I meant exactly what I said—that they should go no longer to the meeting of the Seventh-Day Baptists. This evening they have gone with the housekeeper to the Lutheran church."

"Not Matthew!"

"Yes, Matthew. He went of his own accord. I hope they'll go to other churches, all the churches. Then they'll realize that much that you teach is taught elsewhere, and that will be a step gained."

"The Lutherans are worldly and they don't believe in trine immersion!" Grandfather's voice thundered.

"What do you suppose the Lutherans would say about you? It's only fair that the children should hear both."

"That isn't the way to train children. They should be taught, line upon line, precept upon precept, so that truth is fixed in their minds firmly."

"You've had your chance to fix it firmly."

"I'd like to see them," said Grandfather. If there had been the slightest break in his voice, if his tone had expressed a hundredth part of the misery within him, Levis would have replied more gently. But Levis thought of him only as a bigoted, hard old man.

"You may come here and see them at any time."

"It isn't suitable that I should come to see my grandchildren when they are able to come to see me."

"I'll send for you. I'll drive down and get you myself when you want to come. But the children can't go to meeting, I won't allow it. The other day I passed the door of the Saal and it was open and I went in. It is incredible that you can hold services there. It ought to be torn down; it's like a cave for dampness. I would as soon bury Ellen and Matthew as let them continue under the influence of that place. It's a crime to stand still when the thought of the whole world is changing."

"We've one business in life, to serve God and obey Him. We're not to follow changing winds."

Levis moved impatiently.

"Your lot may have been cast in those dim, musty, horrible places. The lot of my boy and girl is cast in the world where they've got to be better fortified than your doctrine would fortify them. They've got to stand on their own feet and think for themselves. They know right and wrong; the rest they'll have to work out."

Grandfather leaned forward, scorn upon his trembling lips.

"What have you worked out? The doctrine of the Trinity? Or trine immersion? Or salvation by faith? Any of these doctrines?"

"None of them," answered Levis lightly. "Not a single one of them."

"You will be eternally destroyed," warned Grandfather, truly appalled.

"Well," said Levis—then he felt ashamed. There was no use in further horrifying an old man of whom he had so obviously the upper hand. "You and I shouldn't discuss this subject. Each of us knows what the other thinks and there's no likelihood of either of us changing." He tried to recall some pleasant subject upon which he and his father-in-law could agree. Grandfather was not interested in politics, and still less in several wonderful medical discoveries which Levis read about with eyes agleam like those of a traveler at sight of a new continent. Grandfather held the practice of medicine to be useless idling.

"We've had a good harvest," said Levis, at last.

Grandfather stood upright. His beard was blown to one side by a sudden breeze which made the flame of the lamp waver.

"Edward, I ask you once more for the souls of these children!"

"Nonsense," answered Levis. "Their souls aren't mine! If you're going home, you'd better let me drive you down."

Grandfather made a rejecting gesture and walked toward the door. Then he saw that Amos had not risen, but sat, turned in his chair, looking at a little table by the window upon which lay several schoolbooks, a tablet, and two pencils. There was also a glass of water with a few rosebuds in it. A sharp suspicion shot through Amos's heart. Was Ellen studying in advance of her class? Then she would not come back! Burning red dyed his cheeks; he felt that Grandfather and Levis must both be able to read in his heart the emotions which boiled and raged there, putting his salvation in jeopardy.

"Is Ellen studying in summer?" he asked tremulously. "These look like her books."

"Yes," answered Levis. "You've given her a good foundation, Amos, and she has a good mind. But she must move more rapidly, or she'll get into lazy habits."

"I could give her extra work," offered Amos, trembling.

"It isn't fair to ask you to do that. I'll teach her myself till she goes away."

"Is she going away?" asked Amos.

"She'll have to go to finish her education."

"She'll not need education beyond what she can get in school," said Grandfather. Here was a new and greater danger!

"Oh, yes, she will!"

"What do you mean to make of Ellen?"

Until this moment her father had had no definite plans about what he should do with Ellen once her mind was trained. Now he expressed a sudden alluring thought. She had shown certain aptitudes; even before his sentence was finished it seemed to him that the idea had long been forming.

"I may make a doctor of Ellen."

At that the ticking of the old clock in the corner could be plainly heard. Grandfather was amazed and frightened; Amos felt actually dizzy as though the world were whirling.

"Of Ellen!" they said together.

Levis began to elaborate the idea.

"I wish Ellen to earn her own living. Dependence upon any one after one is grown is bad. I wish her to be perfectly independent even of the man she marries, to be able to say to him if necessary, 'I don't need you.' She must have a profession, and it's natural that she has inherited some aptitude for medicine. I mean to give her every opportunity. I'm going to prepare her for college as rapidly as I think wise, and when she is through college she is to go to a medical school if she wishes."

To Grandfather this was the raving of a madman.

"You would turn the world upside down!" he cried.

Levis made no answer. He heard the carriage at the door and Ellen and Mrs. Sassaman coming in. He wished that they had not returned so soon, but here they were. He hoped that his visitors would depart before Matthew finished his work at the barn.

Ellen ran in, her cheeks aglow. When she saw her grandfather, she hurried forward.

"Why, Grandfather, when did you come?"

"A little while ago." There was a quiver under his long beard.

"And Amos! Amos, I'm studying with Father and I'm not coming back to school."

"So I hear," answered Amos.

After this no one spoke, but all looked at Ellen with hunger in their eyes. Standing between them, she felt uncomfortable. She loved them and she knew that they did not feel kindly toward one another. A week ago she would have offered to sit on her grandfather's knee, or she would have taken her fine collection of correct "examples" to show her teacher. Now she moved backward toward her father, who laid his hands on her shoulders and held her close to him.

"I'm studying with Father," said she, as though she were defending him. "Some day I'm going to be an honor to him."

The words echoed in two disturbed hearts until the gate of the Kloster was reached.

CHAPTER VIII
MATTHEW MAKES HIS CHOICE

After stabling his horses Matthew came into the house. One would have thought that any lad would have found the prospect of Ellen on one side of Dr. Levis's desk and the doctor on the other more attractive than the furniture of a bedroom. But Matthew started up the stairs.

"Matthew!" called his father.

Matthew returned obediently to the doorway. He was fast approaching his father's height and promised to be as tall as Grandfather Milhausen.

"Won't you join us?"

Matthew said he thought not; he believed that he would go to bed.

"I hate going to bed," remarked Ellen. Between her and Matthew matters were not yet straightened out, but she was hopeful of a gentle answer.

"You hate many things that are good and right."

Ellen's brown eyes filled.

"Now, Matthew, it isn't necessary to be as serious as all that!" said Levis. "Come and sit down."

"I think I'll go to bed."

Levis half rose, impelled to cross the room and lay an affectionate, persuasive hand on the boy. But he thought better of it and his face colored with relief at an escape from a possible rebuff. Alas, he knew beforehand all that Matthew was likely to do; he remembered another figure with well-set head and gray eyes that had often regarded him unyieldingly from the doorway.

"Very well, my son. Good-night."

When he had gone, Ellen looked at her father. Levis was for the moment off his guard, his past years were moving before him in review. She said nothing, but she began suddenly to feel a deep and loyal indignation.

Matthew climbed to his room slowly, the spark of regret in his heart quenched before he reached the upper step. He sat down at his window and looked out into the moonlight. He said nothing aloud, but what he said in his heart was this:

"The Lutheran preacher prided himself on his learning with his careful pronunciation and his long, long words. The girls stood gayly dressed in the choir for the young men to look at, and each tried to scream louder than the others. I would not look at one of them. Everything was too rich and too comfortable. Ellen's eyes were like bright, shining cat's eyes. It was immodest to stare the way Ellen did."

His gaze sought the moonlit distance as though he would pierce it through. As clearly as though they were before him he saw the old buildings, the low ceiling, the worshipers with downcast eyes. He drew a deep breath of earth-scented air. The field beside the house had been ploughed, and in the dewy night it exhaled a heavy odor, full of decay yet full of promise. He seemed to see the farmer, his hands on the plough; he saw the forward pull of the shoulders of the heavy bays, the warm dark earth curving from the ploughshare. It was all part of the life for which he longed, for which he was made.

Then he looked back into the room. Dimly on his table he saw a pile of books, his hateful books. He was tempted to destroy them, but even stubborn Matthew had still a measure of common sense. He would have to obey his father and go away, but he would come back. He would have another month at home, then he would have to be at the University before the opening to take examinations. He had no expectation of failure and he was above deliberate effort to fail. He was determined to put himself thoroughly to whatever test the city might offer, a Daniel descending willingly into the fiery furnace.

From summer day to summer day, Ellen studied. It was with difficulty that Levis restrained himself from giving her longer lessons. When the cooler weather came, then she should have full hours. Last year's studies were reviewed and the equivalent of a half-year under Amos accomplished before September. Then, when Matthew, sullen-eyed and silent, had been taken to Philadelphia by his father, Ellen began to work in earnest.

She had by this time acquired many ideas that were new. The gods of her little girlhood, Grandfather and Amos, had been entirely displaced and there was but one creature worthy of worship. It was not Levis's positive statements, delivered as though there were no disputing them, which won Ellen; it was his hands on her shoulders and the throb of his beating heart; it was the way he had looked at Matthew when Matthew had refused to come and sit with them. Two months ago he had been like most fathers, a tall, distant, directing human being; now he was a creature not only to be obeyed, but to be made much of, even to be protected and defended. He would have been touched and amused to know what Ellen thought of him.

He left Matthew in a small room at the University and came away, still believing that he would "come out right," that is, he would see how foolish he had been. He would make friends, he would learn to be like other lads, he would forget the bigotry and narrowness to which he had committed himself. Matthew was his own son, and he, Heaven knows, had never been bigoted or narrow.

After visiting the theater and watching a few skillful operations, he went home. He might have seen, had he chosen to cross the street to the Ophthalmic Hospital, Stephen Lanfair, who was there one day in the week, but he did not choose. He still loved him, but he did not care to search him out. He was astonished to find that the confusion of the city wearied and, still worse, worried him.

He found Ellen waiting for him in the doorway and decided as he crossed the porch that she was going to be a pretty girl. Still there was no trace of her mother about her, and little of him—perhaps from his own unknown mother she had inherited her thick curls and her black eyes.

"I have learned what you gave me to learn," she boasted. "Does Matthew like Philadelphia?"

"I think he will."

"You are to go to Umbesheidens' and to Heilmans' right away."

"Has anything important happened?"

"Nothing at all."

Then Ellen felt a little uncomfortable. Something had happened, but it was too small a thing to tell. She had met Amos one afternoon in the woodland. He had been required by a new school law to give a small amount of instruction in botany and had come to find oak leaves. He was sitting on the stump which was her special seat and, glad to see him and ready to talk, she sat down at once on the fallen tree near by.

"How is school?"

Amos did not answer. His curious passion seemed suddenly entirely reasonable. Ellen's hair had gone up, her dresses down.

"It's pretty much like always," said he at last. "But you're not there." Then he added hastily, "And Matthew is not there."

"Are the boys still so dumb?"

Amos hesitated. The boys were very stupid, but it was against his code to speak in such fashion of any one.

"They do their best."

"And Millie? How does she get her lessons?"

"She is no longer there. Oh, Ellen, I wish you would come back!"

"But I'm almost through what you teach," said Ellen. "I couldn't stay long if I did come. And I couldn't come, anyway. Two years from now I'm going to college."

"Oh, Ellen, I hope you'll be a good girl!"

Ellen stirred uncomfortably at the solemnity in Amos's expression.

"I mean to!"

"Don't forget what you have learned!"

"I won't. Father says you taught me very well."

"I mean you're not to forget other things—the true Gospel and the health of your soul."

"I will remember all that," said Ellen quickly, frightened by this sudden allusion to her soul.

"And don't forget me, and that I'm praying for you!"

"I won't," promised Ellen. "Indeed, I won't." Nervously she rose from her place on the old log. It was late afternoon and the shadows suddenly deepened. She held out her hand. The heart which stirred quickly at another's need felt vaguely Amos's misery. "I must go back. I—" she was still a child until she had uttered her childish sentence—"I'll kiss you if you wish, Amos!"

Then Amos knew that the devil was after him indeed. But he bent and laid his bearded lips to the smooth cheek. He said nothing, and in a moment she was gone, flushed and frightened.

"Oh, how silly!" said she to herself. She felt again the light warm touch upon her cheek. "How dreadful to have said such a thing!"

It was of course impossible to describe this foolishness to her father.

Grandfather thought hourly of Matthew. Each day he became more painfully aware that Matthew was young and that temptations were many. He saw him at the end of the week surrounded by all the enticements of a lurid Babylon. Members of the church, astonished at the course pursued by Dr. Levis and permitted—at least they thought it was permitted—by Grandfather, poured into his ears descriptions of orgies indulged in by college students in which wine, women, and song furnished a gay entertainment. Indeed, according to the stories heard by Brother König, wine, women, and song were as necessary to college students as food and sleep. Church-going was unknown without compulsion, and then all were required to attend a single irreligious, inconsistent service where one Sunday Jews preached to Gentiles and the next Gentiles to Jews. Brother König, so keen when the trade of a horse was in question, had heard that on certain Sundays even Catholics set up their altars and tried to proselyte. Matthew, every one believed, had spiritual strength unusual in a young man, but he was, in the local idiom, not that strong.

It was reported also that all evil practices reached their height in the Medical School where Matthew, after an incredibly long stay elsewhere, would eventually spend four years. Brother König could invent little beyond that which he had already imparted, but he stated plainly that there were other things, of which he would not tell.

From Matthew directly Grandfather heard nothing. He wrote to him, but his vaguely addressed envelope did not reach its destination. Meanwhile he came to his assistance in another way. The evenings had grown cool and he and Amos sat within doors, Grandfather in meditation, Amos studying a Latin manuscript which he had found in a room high under the eaves of Saron. It was a discourse on "The Mystic Dove," and was one of the few documents which had escaped prying antiquarians. The quality of the Latin was poor, but Amos was puzzling it out, believing that it had been written by Brother Jabez, one of the most interesting and certainly the most learned of the sect, and that it contained valuable devotional material. Sometimes he read a line to Grandfather, and they discussed it wisely. Alien and worldly historians had described the Kloster, but none had written with understanding and sympathy, and sometimes Amos dreamed of undertaking the task.

Grandfather's plan for the sustaining of Matthew consisted in the offering of prayers each evening at the hour of nine, when, for some reason, he fancied temptations to be at their height. During October the two petitioners made their candle-lit way into the dim and musty Saal and there knelt down before the old benches, and when the Saal grew tomblike in the cold November evenings, they offered their oblations both for Matthew and Ellen in the kitchen, which was filled with the sound of Grandfather's sonorous voice.

Amos also, fresh from the work of the devout and mystic Brother Jabez, prayed for Matthew's well-being, reproaching himself with the neophyte's humility for the pleasure which he took in a neatly rounded petition. He tried to pray for Ellen, but when he did so he seemed to feel her kiss.

November waned, and still each evening the two men besought the Creator of the world to watch over their lamb. Grandfather prayed more fervently and eloquently, with the desperate earnestness of a Jacob who feels the angel slipping from him.

"I have had no sign of an answer," said he despairingly. "We must pray more."

The next evening they prayed for an hour. Grandfather's heavy heart found relief, and Amos on his knees with eyes uplifted expected some visible pillar of fire or of cloud.

"We shall hear from him," said Grandfather with assurance.

The last evening of November was stormy. A late and lovely autumn had ended yesterday with a fiery sunset and a roaring wind, and to-day wind and rain and sleet made the outer world almost intolerable. The blast penetrating between the cracks of the cottage blew the fire to a furious blaze which, roaring up the chimney, gave little heat. The gale stirred the end of Grandfather's beard as he knelt by his chair, and fanned Amos's cheek. There were the dark shadows, the silvery white of Grandfather's beard, the golden light on the brass bowl of the old lamp, and all about the sound and fury of the storm, which seemed to threaten the destruction of the cottage.

Grandfather had worked himself into an ecstasy of expectation and it seemed to him certain that a divine communication was imminent. Amos opened his eyes to look at him and did not close them, so wonderful did he seem. The wind distressed him but the sight of the old man at prayer calmed him.

"O Lord, we pray Thee for some sign that we are heard. We ask Thee for Thy blessing upon one whom we love. Thou knowest the cruel snares set for the feet of the young; keep his feet from going in those paths. Forgive those who have tried to set his way therein. Bring him safely home. We wait, O Lord!"

The voice grew shrill; the key upon which it ended was high, as though the petitioner did indeed wait. There was suddenly a sound outside that was different from the wind, a sharp closing of the gate behind a visitor in haste. Before Grandfather and Amos could rise from their knees, the door opened, and, looking up, they saw not a mysterious visitor, still less Matthew, whom his grandfather thought of first of all, but Levis, pale and drenched with rain.

Levis looked away; he did not like to see men in the act of baring their souls any more than he liked to bare his own.

"I don't wish to interrupt."

"There is no interruption. Sit down, Edward."

Levis did not respond to the invitation.

"Do you know anything of Matthew?"

Amazement answered him.

"Nothing," said Grandfather at last. "I haven't seen him since long before he was sent away. What is the matter with Matthew?"

"He has left school."

Grandfather waited for further information. In his heart he said, "Thank God!"

"He hasn't simply disappeared; he has deliberately run away, after notifying the registrar that he was going. He was forbidden to go, but he went nevertheless."

"I know nothing whatever about him."

"Nor I," said Amos.

"It was three days ago."

"I've been praying that he would resist temptation," said Grandfather boldly. "Perhaps this is the answer."

"I'm not concerned about temptations," answered Levis impatiently. "Matthew is no fool. I'm concerned for his health. Where is he?"

Then Levis felt the door against which he stood move slightly and turned with tigerish swiftness and threw it open. In came the wind and sleet, and in came also Matthew, rain-soaked, bedraggled, with bent head. He pressed hard against the door until it was closed and then stood panting with bright, sullen eyes.

Levis spoke first.

"How long have you been out in this storm?"

"Only a little while. I walked yesterday and the day before, but to-day I got a long ride in a market wagon."

"Have you any clothes here that he can put on?" This in a physician's sharp tone to Amos.

Amos beckoned Matthew to the other room.

"When did you eat?" asked Levis.

"At supper time," said Matthew and shut the door.

Levis sat down by the table. "Have you any stimulant in the house?"

"God in Heaven, Edward, now that he is here and safe, would you ruin him deliberately? Aren't you satisfied?"

"Have you anything that he can take hot?"

Grandfather rose and opened a cupboard door, his hands trembling.

"I will make durch-wax tea."

"Make it then, or let your acolyte make it." In the midst of his rage Levis was pleased with having found exactly the right word.

"It's very bitter tea," said the old man as he poured hot water upon the dried leaves.

"The bitterer the better," said Levis grimly.

When Matthew appeared from the inner room, there came into his father's white face the expression of amazed and intolerable pain which Ellen had once seen. Matthew was unshaven; the dark shade on his cheek was not put there by the soil of travel, it was a curling beard, which, above Amos's black suit, had a significance not to be ignored. For a single second his father thought that this could not be Matthew, it was Amos. He laid his hand against his side as though his heart ached sensibly.

"Are you tired?" he asked.

"Not very."

"Then I think we'd better settle this matter at once. Since you've chosen to come here and to pass your father's gate, we'll discuss it here and for the last time. Why did you leave school?"

"I couldn't see any use in it."

"Do you expect to be a physician without going to school?"

"I don't want to be a physician. I have no interest in it. I want to farm." Matthew burst into tears.

Levis met tears without a change of expression.

"Suppose you do want to farm, there's no reason why you shouldn't go to school. There are new methods of farming which you could learn. You could at least learn how to live. Do you want to remain an ignoramus?"

"I'm not an ignoramus. And I don't want to take your money."

Levis made no answer.

"Because I'm going to be a Seventh-Day Baptist. I'm under conviction. It wouldn't make any difference how long I went to school, the result would be the same. I can't have peace unless I come out openly."

Now it was the heart of Grandfather which threatened to stop beating. Did God hear the prayers of the faithful, or did He not? He poured into a cup some of the steaming brew.

Levis folded his arms and settled himself more closely against the back of the straight pine chair.

"Drink your tea," he commanded. "Then I have something to say to you."

Matthew swallowed the scalding fluid. It warmed him, put heart in him, like a sacramental wine. The storm was almost over; the roar in the chimney had ceased, the roar outside had almost died down; it seemed as though the stage were set for Levis.

"I don't wish to be interrupted," said he. "I'm speaking to my son and you are perfectly welcome to listen. Afterwards you shall have your chance if he wishes to hear you."

Levis began in the fifteenth century.

"The Reformation was a protest against superstition, but only against the more gross superstitions, and the Protestant Church retains to-day the essential superstitions of the Roman Church. The idea of the Son of the Creator of the universe in human form is a fantastic one, now fading from the minds of the more intelligent. Matthew, are you listening to me?"

"Yes," said Matthew in a whisper.

"The idea of a blood atonement, of the sacrifice of a single innocent being for the sins of all the world, is monstrous, a development of the idea that the crimes of men could be laid upon the back of an animal, which, driven away, took them with him. To these ideas the Seventh-Day Baptists have added others as fantastic as any invented in the history of the queer mind of man. I could just as easily worship the bones of a human being as I could believe it essential to have my feet bathed at a church service. Your denial of opportunities is as ridiculous as that of the hermit who prefers to live in bodily uncleanness. You live in mental sloth and blindness! Your founder was a charlatan of the worst sort who beguiled women away from their husbands and mothers away from their children, to live in fancied holiness in this grim place. Generation by generation his followers have grown fewer in number. In Matthew's generation there will not be half a dozen.

"Now, Matthew, this is my last word. You may return to school for the year—that is one alternative. Or you may come home and live like a normal human being and farm if you wish and without further education if you insist, under the condition that you don't join the Seventh-Day Baptists or attend their meetings until you are twenty-one years old. Or, you may stay here, allied with the past, letting the world go by, alienated from your father and little sister who have a right to your society and your love.

"You must choose now, Matthew. I can't continue to hope for years to come that you'll be an honor to me and then have you fail me. You'll have to make up your mind."

It seemed to Levis that he had been talking a long time. He changed his position, driving his hands deep into his pockets and crossing one knee over the other. Seated easily, his clenched fists invisible, he had the appearance of a man too firmly grounded in his philosophy of life to be seriously affected by any chance which might befall. Matthew sat with bent head; Amos in the shadow held his hand across his lips. Once he remembered a cool, soft cheek. Grandfather seemed to have shrunk within himself; his eyes were half closed, his lips moved. It was evident that against the influence of Levis's eloquence he was opposing all his supplicatory powers. He looked at no one; he seemed to be in a trance. The wind began to blow louder, whistling round the corners. The silence within became nerve-racking.

"Well, Matthew?" said Levis, sitting suddenly upright.

Matthew answered without raising his head.

"I'm under conviction. It would be wrong for me to waste my time studying when nothing was to come of it."

Levis got to his feet quickly.

"You mean you're going to stay here?"

"Yes."

Now Grandfather folded his arms across his breast and bent his head almost upon them. Did God hear His children, or did He not?

Levis lifted his hat from the pine table.

"Matthew, look at me!"

Matthew lifted his eyes. For an instant, with torn heart, he longed to throw himself on his father's breast. But his Heavenly Father was more dear. He dropped his eyes once more.

"You've entirely made up your mind?"

"Yes," he whispered.

Levis lingered another instant, his back against the door.

"Listen to me. I have my creed. I believe that no man can behave foolishly or wrongly without having it somehow returned to him. I hope that this hour will never be visited upon you."

Then Levis went out to return no more. He stumbled as he crossed the step and then straightened up in the face of the wind which blew clear and strong from the north. He went through the gate into the graveyard, and saw the full moon, unveiled with mysterious suddenness, illuminating the white stones. The experience through which he had passed, the stormy and magnificent night, the moonlight making so purely white the tallest stone in the little graveyard—all would have moved and racked another man. But he had the power, cultivated through long years in uncongenial surroundings, of detaching himself from the present. He began to repeat a passage of description of which he was fond and which brought before his eyes a foreign landscape which he had never seen, but of which he often dreamed. When it was finished he repeated another passage and yet another, and so came at last to his own door.

The light burned dimly, but a dimmer light would have revealed to his seeking eyes that for which they looked. Under a gay pieced afghan lay Ellen, a book in her arms. Beside her her father drew up a chair and there sat down, scrutinizing each childish lineament, each crisp curl. She slept heavily, and it seemed to him that there was a shadow under her eyes and he bent still more closely over her to discover that the shadow was only that cast by her long lashes. He put out his hand and laid it softly on the bright cover.

Sitting thus, he faced at last his extraordinary situation. Ten o'clock struck, eleven, twelve, and still he was there. His mind traveled to Matthew's babyhood, to Matthew's childhood—would things have been different if he had been different? He was still young then, and thinking not so much of his children as of his own miseries of mind and body, he had not realized that he was guilty of neglect. Even yet he did not feel like a middle-aged man, much less like an old man—but he had a son mature enough to defy him and to leave his house! His pride was deep and high, the pride of a man of intellect—he contemplated with horror the strange atavistic trick played upon him.

CHAPTER IX
A GROWING MIND

That Matthew had returned, that he was to live henceforth with Grandfather, that he was not even to come to the house, were facts which Ellen found difficult to comprehend, yet which she accepted with a child's willingness to accept what her father told her. The family separation caused comment, but no great astonishment in a neighborhood where differences of opinion and the separation of dissenters were frequent.

Life went on quietly, yet not without interesting events. Study under the driving spur of her father's encouragement was an absorbing occupation for Ellen. Presently catalogues were sent for and schools considered and compared. When a sample examination paper arrived, it seemed possible that she might enter college, thoroughly prepared, in two years.

Once, before Christmas, her father took her away. When they drove to the station the pale winter sun had not yet dispelled the pearly mist which lay over the landscape, nor thawed the ice on farmhouse windows. The fields were covered with snow and it was difficult to imagine them dressed in summer's richness of corn and wheat and tobacco. The farmhouses with their huge barns looked like rich manorial properties, as well they might in this deep-soiled country. Until they reached the outskirts of the larger towns nothing was to be seen that was not beautiful, the white stretches of snow, the frozen streams which showed here and there dark pools, the fine clumps of forest trees, white trunks of sycamores, dark masses of evergreens, and willows tipped with yellow beside old spring houses. Nor was there anything that was not indicative of prosperity and peace. The houses were built of brick and stone, the fences were straight and in good repair, there were no weeds; ignorance might laugh at Mennonite and Dunker, Amish and Seventh-Day Baptist, who had tilled the fields and built the houses, but their thrift and labor had founded a great commonwealth.

The ride across the country did not compare in Ellen's mind with the ride between the Susquehanna River and the miles of furnaces and mills. The sight of the towering Capitol, viewed at first from the train above a low stretch of sordid buildings, filled her with delight. When they had climbed the steps to the esplanade, her father turned her away from the Capitol so that she might look down the broad street to the river.

"Oh, Father!" said Ellen holding his hand tight.

"It isn't very long since this was only a frontier fort and the Indians came floating in canoes from far away to barter furs for flintlocks and powder, and for mirrors and baubles for their squaws. Sometime we'll go across the river and get a view of the city and the mountains."

"Shall we really come again?" asked Ellen.

When they went indoors, she had nothing whatever to say. The rotunda was at first simply bewildering, its pictured dome was so far above her, its walls were so white, the angels who held glittering lamps on high were so majestic. Led from place to place she saw interpreted for her the history of her State. William Penn stood, an austere young figure, before an angry father, waited in audience before stern magistrates, or faced westward high on the prow of a boat against a stormy sky. Her eyes dwelt with delight upon each detail; here a blue sky mirrored in a tiny pool, here bright grass, here velvets and laces, here a lean greyhound's body, here leaping flames and young scholars casting their books upon the fire.

There were other pictures; the cold, miserable, intrepid troopers of Valley Forge; William Penn and a magnificent Indian under a yellow tree; the reading of the Declaration of Independence; and last of all, a glorious tableau in which a hundred heroes figured. There was no doubt in Ellen's mind that she had seen the most magnificent edifice in the wide world.

But there were new joys to follow. At sunset the two walked hand in hand upon the long street by the river, keeping on a path close to the brink. When Ellen's eyes left the golden surface of the water, they saw old houses firmly built, stately and well kept. After a while the houses were newer and farther apart. Far across the river trains thundered.

When they retraced their steps the glow had faded and lights sparkled in interminable lines and were reflected in the dark, velvety water. Ellen was young and eager, a warm hand held hers, she could not help dancing by her father's side.

"I'm choosing a house," she said. "There was one gray stone house on a corner—I'm watching for it. It is where I should like to live. I see it now, people are going in!"

Halted by the tightening of her hand, Levis looked across at the gray house. An automobile drove away, another was drawing up to the curb. Wrapped in furs, a lady waited on the pavement for her friends from the second car. The door of the house was open and a maid stood on the upper step.

"Is that a party, Father?"

Levis did not answer. When the door closed he crossed the street. The house fronted both on the river and on the side street, and in the wing there was apparently a suite of offices. He went closer and read the gilt name on a small black sign—"Stephen Lanfair, M.D." Then he took Ellen's hand and walked on. So this was where Stephen lived when he was not traveling about the world! He smiled without bitterness, remembering Stephen's vows of friendship.

Ellen looked up at him, a vague impression growing stronger. She believed that he would like to be here; that he belonged here, rather than with people like Grandfather and Amos.

"Would you like to live here, Father?"

"Would you, Ellen?"

"Oh, yes!"

She answered still more ardently that night. After their supper they went to a huge lighted building, where it seemed all the ladies had gathered from the fine houses. There were also many gentlemen with such an expanse of shirt-bosom as she had never seen. Here was something to tell Mrs. Sassaman—what would she say to such ironing as that?

"What is going to happen?" she asked in a whisper when they had been taken to seats in the first row of the balcony. Merely to sit there would have been entertainment enough, but it was clear that some additional joy was at hand.

"Wait!" said her father.

She watched the rising curtain; she saw standing on a platform a slender young man with a violin in his hand. Now violins were wicked—Millie's brother, who had long since vanished, was said to have brought one from the city and his father was said to have broken it over the corner of the stove.

Then she took her father's hand. The violinist moved his arm lightly and her blood raced through her veins. Her mind filled with pleasing images, detached from one another, leading nowhere, dreamlike, heavenly. She had never seen dancing, but she felt an impulse to rise and discover whether she was really light as air, whether she could really fly.

"Oh, Father!" she cried, when the dancing tune was over.

Then she said no more, had no vocabulary with which to say more. She felt both sorrow and gladness, but most of all she felt the pains of growth. There were tears in her eyes, then on her cheeks.

When on the way to the hotel her father asked whether she had liked it, she answered his question in a curious way.

"I wish Matthew would come back to us!"

The identical desire filled Levis's heart.

"I wish so, too. Perhaps you can persuade him."

"May I take him a Christmas present and speak to him then?"

"Certainly. To-morrow we'll find one for him."

The carefully chosen present was a picture which reminded Ellen of the view from Matthew's window. It was clear to Levis why she liked it, but he had small hopes that either persuasion or art would move Matthew.

"May I get a pair of gloves for Grandfather and something for Amos?"

"Yes, if you wish."

He took Ellen and her packages to the outer gate of the little cemetery on the afternoon before Christmas. The location of the cemetery suggested to him always a memento mori—the brevity of life was not to be forgotten by the residents of the Kloster! The whole place under the covering of snow seemed horribly dreary and forlorn. Ellen clambered out of the buggy and he held her packages out to her.

"In an hour and a half at most, I'll be here."

"May I invite them for Christmas dinner?"

"Yes."

"And Amos?" asked Ellen hesitatingly.

"Yes, and Amos."

She held her packages with care. She had tied them with red cord—such festive packages were not often carried through the cemetery. So accustomed was she to the path that she gave no thought to the white stones. When she came to the second gate she laid her bundle down and fastened the latch, as Grandfather liked to have it fastened, and went up the little walk to the cottage, already shadowed by the Saal and Saron. It had never been her habit to knock at the door, and she did not knock now, but balancing her picture carefully on one arm, she lifted the latch and entered.

It could not have been that the three men had not seen her coming—Grandfather sitting by the stove meditating, and Amos sitting by the table studying, and Matthew sitting idly by the window, all commanded a view of the gate and the graveyard. Each now had in secret a throbbing heart, each longed to let his eyes rest upon her, to devour her. But none had gone to open the door, and now none rose to welcome her.

But her smile was not to be resisted. It brought a faint motion to Grandfather's lips and a red flush to Matthew's cheek, and caused both heart and cheek of Amos to burn. All saw a change in Ellen, added height, a brighter color, a longer dress. Her dress was, moreover, gayer. Hitherto Mrs. Sassaman in selecting her clothes had remembered that she was destined to be a Seventh-Day Baptist and that therefore plainness was her portion; now her father had selected a new coat and hat, with a very decided intention that she was not to be plain in any sense of the word. Her coloring and his own masculine taste inclined him to red, but the clerk had persuaded him to take brown, and Ellen in a brown coat and a fur cap gratified him beyond all his hopes.

Her appearance, her gayety, and above all her greeting moved, alas, every heart against her. If she had come humbly, plainly dressed, remembering the circumstances under which she had departed, her grandfather would have taken her to his arms. If she had been a little less lovely, Amos would not have been afraid of her. If she had been quieter, as suited her sex and station, Matthew would not have turned away from her.

But she cried out with singularly poor judgment, "Merry Christmas," forgetting that Grandfather believed in searching of heart rather than gayety upon such occasions. Upon her grandfather's cheek she bestowed a granddaughterly kiss, and to Amos she gave her hand. Then going to Matthew, she put her arms round him. He longed to respond, to put both his arms round her and to hide his tearful eyes against her curls, but the expression which he gave to this desire was a sharp,

"You're getting too old for such foolishness, Ellen."

Ellen backed toward the table.

"I brought you Christmas presents—gloves for you, Grandfather, and handkerchiefs for Amos, and a picture for Matthew." She handed them round, one by one, then stood, a bewildered fairy-godmother, in the midst of unresponsive beneficiaries.

"I go out very little in cold weather"—this from Grandfather.

Amos did not lift the handkerchiefs from the table.

"I don't approve of pictures, Ellen," said Matthew. "We would much better be reading our Bibles than looking at pictures."

She knew suddenly that Matthew would not come home, that they would not come to dinner, but she hurried to give her invitation before she should lose her voice.

"Father and Mrs. Sassaman and I would like you all to come to dinner to-morrow. Every one. We're going to have turkey."

"We have no heart for gayety, Ellen," said Grandfather.

The two young men, with the healthy appetites of their age, had a second of inward rebellion against this decision, then they acquiesced. Perhaps it was his recollection of the Christmas dinner table with its handsomest white cloth with a red border, its smoking fowl, its hot mince pies, that made Matthew's voice still sharper, his words more cruel.

"You can wrap your picture up."

"You won't come, any of you?" whispered Ellen, her eyes seeking first one, then the other.

Leaving the picture in Matthew's hand she moved toward the door. To all she was a most precious creature about to slip away forever. Her grandfather leaned forward in his chair, pleading like an ancient prophet.

"Oh, Ellen, if you could only see the true light! There is only one thing worth while and that is peace with God. Not education, but your salvation should be your concern."

Matthew's attack was savage. A strange, fierce jealousy filled his narrow heart. Ellen had always obeyed him, she should obey him now!

"You aren't dressed properly. You should know better if Father doesn't."

Amos did not speak, but his eyes burned. If he might only talk to this poor lamb!

"You shan't speak against Father!" cried Ellen. "I don't see why we can't live at peace and love one another. It's wicked for Matthew to make Father feel badly. I would rather"—she knew that she was saying a monstrous thing, but it was true—"I would rather lose my soul than hurt any one like that. I wouldn't believe a religion that made me act like that. I wouldn't believe"—she was now too excited to know exactly what she was saying—"I wouldn't obey a God that wanted me to act like that. I—"

Her sentence unfinished, she got outside and shut the door between her and them. It was beginning to snow and it might be more than an hour before her father came, but she could not stay in the little house.

The snow thickened and twilight fell and she waited, pacing up and down, and feeling the chill of the raw night air through her whole body. She did not go beyond the turn of the road, nor would she start home, for then her father would go into the cottage to inquire for her and he might be met by reproaches and impertinence. Lights shone out from comfortable warm rooms in Ephrata; men returning from their work in the village to homes in the country and women laden with packages looked at her curiously; but she did not forsake her post, though she might have walked home easily.

When at last her father arrived she was shivering. He held his restless horse with one hand and put out the other to help her. He was late—the fastening of a box to the back of the buggy had taken time.

"What in the world are you doing out here?" he asked.

"I'm waiting for you."

"But why here?"

"They wouldn't take my presents," wailed Ellen. "They didn't want them; they think I'm wicked. They won't come to dinner. They were all there. Matthew has a—a—beard, Father! I—" But she could say no more.

When she had changed her clothes, she and Mrs. Sassaman taking counsel together over the proper method of pressing the beautiful coat, and had had supper, Levis asked for an account of the afternoon.

"We'll think no more of it," said he when she had finished. "Matthew has chosen for himself. We've done everything we can and it's useless to cry or worry."

But she refused to give up hope. She thought of Matthew in the night; she thought of him the next morning, when, wakened by the strains which she had heard Kreisler play, she ran down the stairs to find the source of the miracle in a victrola at which Mrs. Sassaman and her father stood beaming; she thought of him at intervals through the snow-bound, pleasant day; she thought of him when, with Mrs. Sassaman, she went to the Lutheran celebration and listened to the children singing their carols and saw—oh, beautiful sight!—a tree all set with gleaming candles.

Mrs. Sassaman felt the Christmas spirit, and her heart warmed to those whom she served. She was a loyal soul and she often defended Dr. Levis when her friends blamed him for Matthew's departure. Her marital aspirations had grown less keen; she asked only to stay and serve. With this thought in mind she visited Levis in his office.

"I would rather be Manda," said she, as though the day of her request to be called Mrs. Sassaman were but yesterday.

"Very well," said Levis. "I like it better, it is friendlier."

She sat down uninvited. She gathered now and then from her friends descriptions of extraordinary diseases, and these she reported to Levis, believing them to be professionally useful. She told now of the fearful pain which "took" the friend of her friend, of the treatment by the medical doctor and by the pow-wow doctor and of the "awful witality" of the sufferer's constitution. When she had finished she rose quickly and went happily away.

Ellen thought of Matthew every day through the winter—in the short mornings when there seemed to be so much to learn; in the afternoons when the world moved more slowly; in the evenings when she recited her lessons. If he had stayed in school, he would be very wise indeed. But instead of studying he preferred to work in the stocking factory at Ephrata—that was what Levis's son was doing now!

One spring evening Ellen went for a walk. The frost was out of the ground; the April air was full of the odor of wet earth, and when one stood still one could hear little, pleasant sounds of running water. She had passed the time when her æsthetic sense was limited to pleasure in a glass filled with wild roses, or a gratifying arrangement of autumn leaves; she had begun to observe the delicate colors near the horizon, the soft purple of the old fences, the shapes of trees and of groups of trees. On this spring evening it was heavenly to be alive; one forgot one's haste to be older, one's regret that learning was a slow process, one's desire to see a thousand places, the cathedral of Rheims, for one, and the Doge's palace and the church of St. Sophia for others, which one would, which one must, see some day. She forgot even Matthew.

Then Matthew recalled himself. Ellen was walking slowly, but not so slowly as two persons who came toward her. At the beginning of the descent into the little hollow where the stream ran, she stopped and stood still to listen to the bubbling water and from there discerned, silhouetted against the yellow sky, two dark figures that might well have been ghosts of the early settlers of the land. The man's figure was tall, the woman's short; she wondered what couple was courting on this pleasant evening. Imagination made her flush suddenly, but before she had time to translate the incident into her own experience, the familiarity of the man's outline startled her. There was only one person who had shoulders like that and that was Matthew, who was now a Seventh-Day Baptist, having been plunged one morning in the cold waters of the creek.

The girl with Matthew was Millie König, could be no other, and the young people of the Seventh-Day Baptists did not walk with each other unless they were betrothed!

She hurried home with her miserable news.

"Father, I saw him walking in the road, and Millie was with him."

Levis knew the significance of this companionship. Under his breath, he said scornfully, "Good Lord!" and aloud, "We'll try not to think of it, Ellen."

He had thought often since his visit to Harrisburg of Stephen. He felt with increasing frequency the uneasy sensation in his heart and he knew that he ought to have a word with some one about it. Stephen was an eye specialist, but he was also acquainted with general medical practice. There was a certain disease of the heart which warned gently for a long time and then leaped with tigerish swiftness—but it could not be that!

There was another problem which he should like to lay before his friend. Life on the farm would be intolerable without Ellen and he believed himself still young enough to find another place. Stephen might be able to tell him of a practice and to help him to it. Neither favor was too large to ask if the old friendliness continued. He planned to go to Harrisburg at some convenient season, but he postponed his journey week after week, believing that there was still time enough.

CHAPTER X
UNEXPECTED GUESTS

A large store of information may be put into a receptive mind in two years. Levis, watching his sturdy young Ellen to see that her bright cheeks did not grow pale or her alert step slow, proceeded to find out how much she could acquire. It was a new and interesting occupation, but his pleasure was tempered by a remorseful wonder as to how much could have been accomplished if he had not been so certain that his own blood and the spirit of the age would keep Matthew and Ellen safe.

Ellen continued her mathematics and concluded her geography. She had studied Beginner's Latin with Amos, and her father required her to translate French. Furnishing his pupil with an outline of English history, he prescribed reading and the relating of what she read. Elementary astronomy, botany, and physiology she absorbed like a sponge.

He sent for books which he had long wished to possess, but had denied himself, a many-volumed illustrated history of art, a history of music, a history of architecture in sumptuous dress. He sat late at night thinking over plans for Ellen, and even brought his accounts up to date and sent out bills, so that nothing might be denied her.

The summer and another winter passed and between the farm and the Kloster there was no communication. Ellen saw Matthew and Millie walking together, and hid by the roadside or turned back. There drifted to Levis's ears a report that Matthew wished to marry, but that Millie's father was obdurate. Millie should not marry a penniless man, the two must wait; when Matthew's prospects improved, then marriage might be discussed. He had, it was reported, spoken his mind plainly.

"You should have stayed in the nest. What if you couldn't go to meeting for a while? You are now near twenty-one and then you can do as you choose. You should have consulted with some one."

Ellen had little idea of what college would be like, and still less of what life would be like, but she knew that they must be glorious and she longed intensely for both experiences. The second summer of preparation passed slowly. She was sure that much was happening elsewhere and she knew that little was happening to her.

One Sunday afternoon she went to sit on her favorite stump in the woodland. Before starting she looked at herself in the mirror, at her curls and rosy cheeks, made redder by a reflection from her scarlet tie. She held up her hands and saw with satisfaction that they were whiter than any other hands she knew.

Her inspection had the result which usually follows the self-inspection of seventeen—she wished that there was some one at hand to admire. Perhaps in the woods she would meet a stranger! There she could at least dream of meeting one.

She had been established on the stump for an hour, now reading, now sitting idly, her chin in her hands, when, lifting her head, she observed that the farmhouse was about to receive an unusual visitation. Since the house stood near the main road, she saw daily the cars of tourists who were starting across the country, or who journeyed to Gettysburg or Pittsburgh. Once, sitting on the fence, she had talked to several elegant ladies who walked about while a tire was being repaired.

Now a car, more beautiful than any she had ever seen, was turning up the lane and approaching the farmhouse. Its passengers had come, no doubt, to ask for some small favor, and she, alas, was not there to wait upon them! A month ago she would have run, now she descended in as rapid a walk as dignity would permit.

To her astonishment she found when she reached the porch that the occupants of the car, except the driver, had gone into the house. Curious as she was, she was seized with sudden shyness and wished herself back under the trees. But in plain view as she was from the office windows there was nothing to do but to proceed.

Her father appeared at the office door, his face flushed and smiling. Stephen Lanfair, halting for a moment at his gate, had seen his name on the letter box and had come in with his wife. He had passed unknowing, he said, many times. Levis's heart throbbed so that he had to draw deep breaths of air. Stephen was the old Stephen; his renewal of their friendship seemed to make possible all he had dreamed. Mrs. Lanfair's presence suggested the solution of another problem which had troubled him. Ellen needed associations and opportunities which he did not know how to give her; Mrs. Lanfair might help him to provide them.

"Oh, Ellen, come here," he said, not without pride. "I was just going to find you!"

Ellen felt his arm across her shoulders. It was silly to be afraid of meeting strangers. She lifted her head and went in smiling.

"This is my daughter."

She felt her hand taken in a long, firm grasp, and received a general impression of height and grayness and alertness and very bright eyes. She looked up into them and smiled, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. She was sensitive and she had as yet received few impressions which were not those of childhood. This stranger, who was younger than her father and much older than herself, was the first person like her father whom she had ever met.

"Your daughter!" said a low voice.

Then she heard another voice, and courage vanished and embarrassment returned. It was that of a woman, seated in her father's chair, and looking about with appraising eyes. She was small, and the old chair in which she sat seemed much too large for her. Ellen saw in a flash the handsome and slightly bizarre dress, through the yoke and sleeves of which her flesh showed faintly pink, the strange and pretty face with brows which almost met. It was not in the least a happy face, but Ellen was not critical. Hilda was not interested in this plain ménage or in Stephen's old acquaintance, recalled thus suddenly to his mind. But it pleased her for the moment to be friendly.

"Come and shake hands with me," said she, and Ellen obeyed, feeling young and awkward and ill at ease.

"Do you go to school?"

"I go to school to my father."

"Have you brothers or sisters?"

"I have—"

"One brother who is at his grandfather's," Levis answered for her. "Lanfair, it is doubtless difficult for an observer to realize that you and I were in school together."

"In school together!" Hilda looked from one to the other. "Impossible!"

Stephen halted suddenly. He had been moving about restlessly, now picking up one of Ellen's books, now reading the titles on Levis's shelves. He was at once glad and ashamed to have found Levis. But he should have come alone, he should not have brought Hilda. He stood close to Levis, his tightly closed hand thrust into the pocket of his coat.

"Levis was an instructor and a Senior at once, and I was a Sophomore," he explained. "He left school and married and I continued to study. I didn't begin to practice till he was well settled in life." He turned his head and looked at Levis, and from eye to eye a message flashed. In Stephen's there was regret and a childlike desire to be restored to the good graces of an older person.

Levis returned the glance steadily and with the same expression with which he looked at Ellen, as though Stephen needed, as Ellen needed, love and care. She saw the exchange and curiosity and admiration quickened. She glanced at Hilda who was taking in from under half-lowered eyelids the old sofa, the little table, and the doctor's medicine cupboards. Her stare made Ellen determine to examine carefully all these articles of furniture. Had the never-failing broom of Mrs. Sassaman left lint, or had her own dust-cloth touched them too lightly?

A restless step brought Stephen to her little table.

"Are these your books?"

Ellen explained her course of study. His bright eyes were kind; she looked frankly into them and smiled while she talked.

"I'm going to college in the fall. I can hardly wait."

Levis, after a second's reflection about the present temper of Mrs. Sassaman, spoke to Hilda.

"Won't you stay and have supper with us? Now that we have you here, we'd like to keep you."

Hilda uttered effusive regrets and Levis looked at her curiously. Her expression had changed; it was no longer that of slightly bored curiosity, but of anger, sharp and unpleasant. Her eyes darted to her husband, then back to Levis, and then back again to the little table where Stephen and Ellen stood together.

"Oh, thank you. It's really very good of you, but it's impossible, really. We have guests ourselves this evening. We should be going now. We sail for Europe on Tuesday."

"Medical convention at Vienna?" asked Levis, his keen, curious eye fixed upon her.

"Yes; that is, my husband is going there. I'm going to Paris for clothes. I don't like conventions. Nor medicine," said Hilda as she rose. She laid one hand in the other and kneaded them together in a strange gesture.

"It's time to go!" said she.

Hearing the sharpened voice, Ellen turned swiftly. How fairylike this stranger was, now that she was standing! She determined in a flash to live on bread and water, to take some sort of medicine, to do anything to resemble her. She saw the small, arched foot, set in absurd, high-heeled shoes—how did she manage to stand, and how to walk? But she did both gracefully. Ellen had heard the invitation; she hastened to second it.

"I do wish you'd stay!"

Stephen looked down at her. There was a quality in Ellen which was hard to describe unless one said that she gave herself with every smile. He had dismissed the thought of children as he had dismissed his father's creed, but from his deeper consciousness an instinctive longing rose. "I wish I had her or one like her!" said he to himself with sudden startled hunger.

"Won't you stay?" said Ellen to him.

Then Ellen was conscious that something unpleasant had been said or done. She could not tell what it was, but she felt that she had given offense. Hilda went out quickly into the hall and stood waiting. She did not speak to Levis or to Ellen; she only said once more, "I said that it's time to go!"

"You're not really going this minute!" protested Levis, his sharp disappointment quickening his throbbing heart.

"Yes," said Stephen. His voice was louder than it had been and even a little more pleasant. "We really must be off." He held out his hand. "I haven't forgotten anything, not anything!"

Hilda followed across the grass to the car and stepped in. From the car Stephen waved his hand and Levis and Ellen waved theirs. Hilda did not look back. The car started noiselessly; they sat like king and queen in a state chariot, a silent retainer conducting them.

"I think she behaved in a very queer way," said Ellen.

"I agree with you," said Levis. He went into his office and stood looking at the books in his case, and Ellen followed closely.

"Who are they?"

"He was a friend in college. I haven't seen him for years." Frowning, Levis took down one of a set of volumes and went to his desk. "He was a nice boy."

"Was he married when you knew him?"

"No; I remember hearing that he had married a rich wife."

"She must be very rich. Did you know they were coming?"

"No, indeed."

"Where do they live?"

Levis had opened his book at the letter "D," and did not answer. The uneasy sensation in his heart had sharpened once or twice in the last hour to an acute though fleeting pain, gone as soon as it was felt. He had seen Stephen, but the visit seemed to make impossible all that he had hoped for.

For a moment, in curiosity about Hilda's behavior, he forgot his own problems. He had found the article which he wished to consult under the letter "D," but he could not fix his mind on what he read. It was in reality something within his own breast which disturbed him, but it seemed to him that it was Ellen hanging over his shoulder and cutting off the air which he needed.

"I wish you'd run away, Ellen, for a little while. I'll talk to you later about these people."

"All right," said Ellen cheerfully, remembering her own unwillingness to be interrupted. She read over his shoulder—"'Dementia'—Father, who has that?"

"No one that I know of, Missy."

"I expect you think I have it. Well, read away, I won't bother."

Levis smiled at the tone of maternal indulgence, then he returned to his book. Again he put his hand over his heart uneasily. The sensation was now of weak fingers moving gently. He coughed, then he looked at Ellen who had sat down at her table. What a strange woman Lanfair's wife was! What had annoyed her? Most wives who brought fortunes proved to be impeditive in some fashion—there was unquestionably an impediment here! He turned a page and read for a moment. There was a mental disorder difficult to distinguish in early stages from sheer devilishness of disposition; and patients had peculiar traits and nervous ways like this woman. Poor Lanfair! Perhaps he would return and confide in his old friend. He had looked as though he needed a refuge.

Presently Ellen returned to her place on the stump and there sat for half an hour.

"I think she was very disagreeable," she said, beginning to speculate about married life. She, Ellen, would never make her husband uncomfortable!

"If I get one!" said Ellen. "And he was splendid!"

They must live in a very grand house—perhaps she and her father might some day visit them. She realized that she didn't even know their name—how strange the whole incident was!

At the end of half an hour curiosity sent her back to the house. Her father had now had time to read all he wanted, she was sure. She remembered that to-morrow a dressmaker was coming to get her ready for school and she sang for joy as she walked.

But in the half-hour that she spent in the woodland, life had taken a long stride. Levis sat with his treatise open at "Dementia," his eyes still bent upon the page. He had not moved since she went away.

"Father!" she cried gayly.

He answered without lifting his head.

"I've been taken suddenly with a bad stitch in my side, Ellen, and I don't wish to move until I've had medicine. You'll find it in the right-hand cupboard in a blue bottle. Bring me a pellet."

Ellen obeyed quickly, growing pale. Levis broke the pellet in his hand and held it close to his nostril, then he straightened his shoulders. It was exactly like a tiger that the thing leaped upon one!

"I'm going over to the couch. Don't be frightened if I go slowly. Lend me your shoulder."

Ellen made her shoulder like iron.

"Telephone Dr. Wescoe."

Ellen flew. It seemed when she returned that her father's face was less terribly gray and drawn.

"What shall I do now?"

Levis managed a wry smile.

"You'll make a capital doctor. Bring paper from your desk and sit here, beside me. You must be brave and steady."

Ellen obeyed swiftly.

"I've known for some time that my heart was a bit out of order. I'm likely to have another attack, but probably not before the doctor gets here. I want you to write something down."

Ellen looked steadily at Levis. If she held his eyes with hers, they could not become blank, unseeing, as they were a moment ago! There was in his face now a dreadful eagerness. In spite of the last hour he turned in desperate need to the memory of Stephen's old affection. Stephen had forgotten for a while, but he meant to remember and he would help him now. He felt the same fearful despair which he had felt as a boy when he needed food and did not know where to get it. He had heard the Creator called upon at too many death-beds to ignore entirely that refuge, but he was not one to turn even in such a moment to a help which he had denied. The "sum and term" of education had not been his, the loss by death of one whom he had deeply loved. If his wife had died in their earliest married life, or if Ellen had died, his spiritual history might have been different.

But what was it he had meant to do? Ah, yes! Ellen was waiting, pencil in hand.

"I give to my daughter Ellen all my property and make my friend—"

"'Make my friend,'" repeated Ellen after a pause.

"Can you remember his name, Ellen?"

"I don't think I heard it!"

"It'll come to me! Listen! You and Matthew inherit this farm from your mother. What I have besides you must take. Don't let them shame you out of it! Remember it's my will. If you wish, you can live economically and share with Matthew after you've had your education. I feel better, darling." He took suddenly a long, relieving breath. After all he was not to be cut off now from life, from Ellen. He looked deeply into her frightened eyes. It was now that she would need him! He had, he felt suddenly with amazement, not yet really lived; he could not die! Tears rolled down upon his cheeks. "I'll be able to eat supper with you, I'm sure. We needn't worry to complete the paper. The doctor will write it for me. Don't look so horrified. I think—"

His smile stiffened suddenly and drops of perspiration appeared upon his forehead. Was everything then over? He put out his hands and took Ellen's face between them.

"Don't let them keep you here! Remember!"

"I'll remember," promised Ellen.

Her head dropped to his breast, pressed by his hands close to his heart. She could see nothing, but she could hear a strange beating sound like a wooden hammer upon flesh. Her body was cramped; it seemed to her that she could not breathe; then her father's embrace relaxed and she rose quickly.

Her wild glance sought the window. Mrs. Sassaman drove slowly up the lane, Dr. Wescoe's car turned in from the highway, but their coming now made no difference.

CHAPTER XI
CHANGE

Within a few minutes the farmhouse took on the air of almost hysterical activity which follows upon a sudden death. Mrs. Sassaman, after sinking upon a chair and giving a few tearful gasps, went to her room to change her dress, so that she might set to work. The tenant farmer drove away to carry the startling news to Grandfather and Matthew, and his wife panted up the hill and sat waiting in the kitchen until Mrs. Sassaman should be ready to give her the detailed information for which her soul longed. But Mrs. Sassaman had too exalted a sense of her own importance to gossip. There were, moreover, many things to be done at once, the house to be put in perfect order, funeral meats to be baked, the bees to be told of their master's death, and all the jars of preserves in the cellar to be turned.

Matthew returned with Calvin bringing word that Grandfather would follow with Amos. Having had no active exercise, Matthew had grown stout and looked nearer thirty than twenty. He kissed Ellen and they sat silently until Grandfather arrived.

"The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." It was Grandfather's accustomed salutation on entering a house of mourning. He spoke with a long sigh which expressed his apprehension about the fate of his son-in-law.

In spite of his misgivings he planned to bury Levis's body in the little cemetery beside his wife. Wednesday afternoon would be a suitable time and he would preach the sermon himself. For a half-hour the three men and Ellen sat together in the parlor. Frequently Matthew glanced at Ellen, then away. God had strangely given him his heart's desire, but he could not help pitying Ellen. He felt very solemn and important.

"I don't think that bright tie looks well under the circumstances, Ellen," he said gently.

Ellen rose and went upstairs. As she reached the upper step she heard the door of her father's office open and the undertaker come into the hall. At once the three black figures crossed to the office. She heard whispers and the door was closed.

She did not know whether an hour had passed or only a few minutes when she heard her name called solemnly. Grandfather stood by the parlor table, a tablet in his hand. His black eyes gleamed, his old hand shook. Matthew's eyes were bent upon the floor and Amos looked at Ellen in a frightened way.

Grandfather stepped between Ellen and the door and closed it. It seemed to her that she was shut into prison with three jailers.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"That is what we have to ask you, Ellen," said Grandfather. "What is this paper?"

Ellen recognized the writing which she had begun at her father's command.

"That is mine, Grandfather. Please give it to me."

Grandfather held out the paper so that she might read, but he did not relinquish it.

"Did you write those words?"

"Yes."

"Who is this friend?"

"He is a friend of Father's who was here this afternoon."

"What is his name?"

"I don't know."

"Where does he live?"

"I don't know."

"Does he know anything of this?"

"No."

"You didn't write this after your father died, Ellen?"

The words at first merely paralyzed. When their import was clear, she could say nothing. Her silence was to Grandfather condemning—alas, for the human soul which is unsupported by Christian principles!

"Why, no!" she cried at last. "Of course not! He started to dictate it to me, but before he had finished he felt better and thought it might be postponed."

"You knew you were writing words which would take your brother's property away?"

"No," said Ellen. "It was my father's property."

She saw a glance pass from Matthew to Grandfather. Both sincerely believed that God had prevented Levis from doing a deed of injustice.

"It wasn't sisterly to write such words!"

"I didn't mean to be unsisterly," protested Ellen. "Father wanted me to be educated. He said that Matthew could get along well."

Grandfather tore the upper sheet from the tablet and put it into his pocket.

"We should have very little respect in the community if such a thing were known."

Now Amos found his tongue. He leaned forward, his cheeks crimson.

"Ellen could not be dishonest," he said.

Grandfather looked at him in amazement.

"The women make serious mistakes, and Ellen has made one. They act before they think. Now I will take the first watch to-night."

Ellen crept slowly up the back stairway and closed her door. Tears came in a flood, hot, blinding, choking, drowning all thought, preventing realization of the seriousness of her bereavement. After a long time she fell asleep.

In the two days preceding the funeral she made plans. Only thus could she keep her composure and continue to feel a connection with her father. It was now June. She would stay until September, then she would go to college, as he had intended. Matthew would doubtless come here to live and would bring, alas! Millie with him. But she must reconcile herself; since she was going to have her way, Matthew should have his.

She lived through the funeral service with few tears. The house was thronged, and the line of carriages and automobiles extended far down the road. Levis had lived differently from his neighbors and there was much curiosity about his house. He had used it all, treating the parlor as though it were no more precious than the kitchen, and drawing no shades to keep carpets from fading. There were a few strangers present, members of the county medical society to whom Levis's connections by marriage were vaguely interesting.

Grandfather preached upon the certainty of death and the necessity for preparation, and made no allusion to Levis's heresies. When they returned to the house Ellen expected that he and Amos and Matthew would return to the Kloster. But instead all went into the office.

"Ellen!" called Grandfather.

Ellen went unwillingly and sat down on a chair near the door. She dreaded argument, it could only cause ill-feeling. Her plans were made.

"Ellen, death brings changes with it. It will bring change to you." There was a gloating affection in Grandfather's voice. He believed that God was bringing Ellen back to him.

"Yes," said Ellen quickly, determined not to cry.

"When the father goes, we must consider the property. Now your mother had this farm, inherited from her aunt for whom she was named, and she left it to your father to go after his death to you and Matthew, share and share alike."

"Yes," said Ellen.

"It is only natural that Matthew should want to move on his property now."

"Yes," said Ellen. "Of course."

"It is Matthew's intention to be married."

"Yes," said Ellen faintly.

"He has chosen a modest and pious young woman of his own faith who will doubtless be a blessing to him. He wishes to be married soon."

"I'm glad if Matthew is happy." Ellen's eyes sought Matthew's timidly.

"Then he will come here."

"When will that be?"

"I had thought not till spring," said Matthew for himself. "But now it will be sooner, perhaps in a few weeks." That portion of his cheeks which remained uncovered glowed brightly. He had waited long to possess Millie and the delay was disturbing his regular and calm mental processes.

"Not so soon as that!" cried Ellen, in amazement.

"Yes," said Matthew firmly. "Father is gone and things are changed and the sooner we get used to the new ways the better."

"But Calvin will be here till April!"

"I shall continue to employ him. I have talked with him already."

Ellen's face paled.

"I thought I'd stay here with Mrs. Sassaman till September. Then we could have the house ready for you before I go."

Matthew changed his position, settling himself more firmly in his chair. Ellen would have to do as he said; God was blessing her by giving her no choice.

"Now, Ellen, let us talk this out. The farm belongs to you and me—isn't it sensible that we stay here and work it? Millie isn't such a strong person as some and she may be from time to time laid up, and then there would have to be hired help. Isn't it foolish to hire a woman when you are well and strong?"

"Oh, but, Matthew, I'm going to college! It's all settled! You know that I'm to go to college!"

Silence was Matthew's answer. It was a pity that Ellen was still stubborn. Grandfather took off his spectacles.

"Ellen," he began patiently, "you don't understand business matters. The farm is much run down and Matthew means to build it up. If he gives it the attention it should have, and makes new fences, and gets the implements and lime and everything needed, there won't be any extra income for five years anyhow."

"Then I shall be too old to go to college!"

"You know already far more than is necessary."

"But if I'm not willing to stay here, if I think it's wrong, if I refuse?" Ellen's voice was still steady.

"I don't wish to be hard on you, Ellen. My heart yearns over you. But I'm your natural guardian and I have control over your property. I think that Matthew's plan is correct, and that it should be carried out. You can't expect him in these first years to run a farm and raise a family and pay an income besides!"

"But there was Father's will that he wished me to write," said Ellen, still steadily. "His last thought was that I should be educated."

"It is this way, Ellen. Your father left no real will. He had about five thousand dollars saved. Now half of five thousand is two thousand five hundred, and the income on that is only a little over a hundred dollars a year. That would not take you far."

"But he thought it was enough!"

"He meant to let you spend the principal, Ellen. That cannot be now."

Ellen knitted her brows.

"I'll sell Matthew my part of the farm."

Grandfather shook his head.

"We couldn't let you do that. The farm will be worth much more in five years than now. If we did such a thing our neighbors would reproach us because we hadn't dealt fairly with you."

"Let me have my two thousand five hundred dollars," begged Ellen. Here was light in darkness! "That is all I need; that will see me through."

Grandfather shook his head.

"I can't consent to that, either, Ellen. That must be held against a rainy day and meanwhile its income must go into the farm. My child, try to accept your lot! You have a home, comfort, everything you need, and if you stand by Matthew you will have more than you need."

"I think families should be alone!" Ellen cried desperately. "If I were Millie I wouldn't want any one to help run my house."

"You don't know Millie," said Matthew earnestly. "She has no proud ideas and she's very willing to have you help her. I have laid the matter before her."

Grandfather went to speak to Calvin and Amos followed him. Matthew would have followed also, but Ellen called him back. She stood by her father's desk, facing his unwilling gaze.

"Is it possible, Matthew, that you won't help me go to school? Couldn't you lend me money? You have the farm as security."

"You're not of age. You'd have to have Grandfather's consent, and that he wouldn't give. Besides, to be frank with you, I've had experience with advanced schooling and I couldn't help you to it under any circumstances. It begets pride of intellect, it leads young people away from God, it is a curse."

Suddenly Ellen looked at her brother with a detached curiosity, as her father had looked at him. When he had gone she went up to her room. Its loneliness was intolerable, and still more difficult to bear was the sound of the evensong of birds, the sight of the young moon rising over the woodland, and the echo of a laugh from the road. She went down to the kitchen. Mrs. Sassaman was on the porch, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, swaying back and forth in her rocking-chair: Ellen determined to go and sit on the step and lay her head against her knee.

Instead she turned and went back to her room and sat down at the window. She would not give way to mourning with Mrs. Sassaman, kind though she was. This was no time to mourn; she must think, must find some avenue of escape. Wisdom and peace of mind came from learning—her father had had both—learning she must have to lift her from despair.

Suddenly her heart leaped. The mysterious visitor to whom her father meant to entrust her—who and where was he? He had said that he lived not far away. Lancaster, Harrisburg, Reading, York were not far away—even Philadelphia was not much more than fifty miles. But she did not know his name, she had not observed which way his car had turned at the foot of the lane. And he was sailing at once for Europe! But he might read of her father's death in the newspaper before he sailed or later in one of the medical journals which published obituaries. Here was a gleam of hope! Her immaturity resented grief, repudiated it, would not harbor it. She paced up and down the room, now making wild plans, now crying. She had not yet realized what had happened and she still had high hopes of life.

CHAPTER XII
A QUICKENING TERROR

Mrs. Fetzer, the housekeeper, received Hilda's dinner guests on the evening of the visit to Levis. It was not a convenient season for guests, it being Sunday and the larger part of the staff of servants having been dismissed yesterday, but Hilda had extended her invitation with her usual indifference to the comfort of others. Her trunks were not yet packed nor had she indicated what articles were to go into them. Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane, who had expected to receive that afternoon directions about a rearrangement of Stephen's records and the preparation of data for a series of articles, had come at five o'clock and waited until seven.

Fetzer was annoyed, but not in the least dismayed, having been prepared for this event by many similar experiences. She put on her best black silk dress and welcomed the two women and two men who, undisturbed, settled themselves in the library for a game of cards; then she changed to less elegant attire, since in the absence of the waitress she would serve their dinner. Neither the black patch over her eye, nor the quick motions by which she compelled one eye to serve as two, made her repulsive or grotesque.

Waiting upon the table she saw that something more serious had occurred than the puncturing of a tire which had delayed the Lanfairs after leaving Levis's house. Hilda hailed her friends carelessly and asked that dinner be served at once. She ate little, watched impatiently Fetzer's deliberate ways, and announced as she rose from the table that her packing was still to be done. The guests departed amiably with loud good wishes for the journey.

Fetzer, going into the hall to tell Stephen that Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane waited, approached the library door slowly. Observing him furtively during dinner, she had been shocked by his expression; he looked to her like a beaten child who appealed from earth to heaven, and she sent up several fervent petitions in his behalf. She longed desperately to help him, but she was wholly powerless.

To Fetzer Hilda was a wicked woman; no other explanation for her mistress's behavior had ever occurred to her. Even Stephen's patience suggested no different explanation.

She did not advance far into the hall. Hilda had restrained herself in the presence of Fickes, the chauffeur, and with greater difficulty before her guests, and the postponement of the expression of her wrath had not in the least softened her heart. It had, on the contrary, exaggerated the grievance and sharpened the tongue which was to utter her wrongs.

"But she was a child!" Fetzer heard Stephen protest. His voice was like his eyes, childlike in its earnestness. It was bitter, indeed, that this old friendship which had been without exception the happiest in his life was now finally spoiled. What would Levis think of him? He regretted with sickening self-reproach his call. He might have known better; now he could never see him again, he hoped that it might never be necessary to see him—a hope, indeed, which was already granted.

Hilda accepted no apology.

"Child!" she repeated. "That was a pose to attract. How ridiculous to show you her books! She didn't look at you like a child, nor you at her."

For a moment silence prevailed. Fetzer meditated advancing. But Hilda had not finished; she found Stephen's silence far more irritating than his speech. She turned fiercely upon him with a remark which, while it was not new, was uttered with truly original ferocity.

"You'd like me to be dead; then you could live as you pleased on my money!"

Fetzer withdrew. She went through a passageway to the office where again Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane waited.

"I guess Doctor'll be out soon."

Neither of the women answered—sometimes she believed that they observed nothing, sometimes she believed that they knew everything.

After loitering for about ten minutes in the passage she again approached the library. Now Stephen was alone, sitting with his back to the door.

"Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane are here, Doctor." She spoke as though they had arrived at this moment.

"Thank you," said Stephen, without turning. Fetzer saw that though his head was bent there was no book on his knee. For the thousandth time she breathed a silent petition in his behalf. The ways of the Creator were, indeed, past all finding out.

Stephen sat for a long time looking down at his clasped hands. He believed that his life was at times in danger, but he did not believe that a committee of inquiry could find proof of the madness whose outbursts were reserved for him alone. It was a pleasant prospect for a European journey!

CHAPTER XIII
MATTHEW COMES HOME

To Millie König the last few weeks of single life were a period of intense satisfaction. Her waiting for Matthew and matrimony had seemed long, but now, at last happiness and prosperity were at hand. It was very unlikely that any of her seven sisters would marry so well.

For the home which she was leaving she had no deep affection. She believed herself to be the only quiet soul in a noisy brood, and the incessant chattering and laughing which accompanied all the daily tasks, the crowded kitchen, the shared bedrooms, the full knowledge of one another's affairs, offended her. She disliked to be teased, and the chief form of wit in the König household was teasing. She had loved to go to meeting because it was quiet and she could sit and think about her own affairs, and she liked Matthew because he was quiet.

She was ambitious and her future offered as large a field for advancement as she could conceive. The Levis farm was in poor condition, but the land was fertile and the buildings were solid. On the other side of the wood-crowned ridge ran a vein of limestone which could be made a source of profit—Matthew had told her long ago of his desire to develop it, together with many other secret wishes.

"Five years of careful economy," said Matthew now. "Then we shall not need to travel with horses"—this with actual as well as figurative meaning.

On the evening of his father's funeral he laid before Millie his completed plans. He came to the door of the farmhouse and asked her to walk with him to the gate.

"It's all over, Millie."

"Yes," said Millie with a becoming sigh. "I was there this afternoon. I thought your Gran'pop laid things out right to those of us that are left."

Matthew had no desire to discuss his grandfather's sermon which had decently omitted many things that might have been said. He had no sense of triumph; he accepted God's will when it profited him as he accepted it when it sent him to work in the Ephrata stocking factory. His mind was upon Millie; in the twilight he put his arm round her and drew her close to him. Her cheek was like a rose petal and her whole body breathed freshness and health.

"How soon could you get married, Millie?"

It was not in Millie's nature to be coy.

"I'm ready now," she answered promptly. "I have all my things this long time, and it's not like going into a house where there is nothing."

"In a month, then?"

Millie saw no reason for even a week's delay. An intense impatience filled her soul.

"Yes. How is Ellen?"

Matthew shook his head. A heavenly providence had delivered Ellen into improving hands.

"She can't accept this. It's so with people who are not religious."

Millie determined to show herself kind.

"She needn't think that she will have it too hard. Everything can be pretty much like always. I think we should even put away the bedding and things like that for her. I shouldn't like her to say that I used what should be for her Aussteir."

Matthew tightened his arm round this thoughtful creature. He had come a long, hard way to his happiness, but it promised to be worth the journey.

The next day Millie counted her sheets and blankets and table-cloths and her many pieced quilts, made in long winter afternoons to an accompaniment of steady sisterly chatter. No bride of the neighborhood had ever had so fine an assortment.

Matthew lived at the farmhouse. He slept in his old room and ate his meals with a quiet Ellen and a tearful and monosyllabic Mrs. Sassaman. At other times he was at his work. His eyes shone with eagerness, his brow was furrowed with pleasant thinking. He could have embraced the trees and thrown himself upon the soil which he loved.

Already, though the farm was run down and needed all that he could put into it, he looked with longing eyes upon a small adjoining property, across which he could reach the highroad directly from the quarry he meant to open. He looked down upon it from the woodland one August afternoon. The undertaking would be inexpensive and the profit would be out of all proportion to the small outlay. If he only had enough money to begin! Perhaps Grandfather would lend it to him. He did not like to go to Millie's father, would not, indeed, though success was certain. That was no way for a self-respecting son-in-law to begin married life!

Then, as though his question had been borne aloft by the wind, the wind returned an answer. He looked at the nearest tree, a fine oak from which the soft whisper came; he looked at the next tree which was equally fine. In reality the plan for their own destruction was not breathed by the trees, but originated in a suggestion of Millie's, made long ago when possession of them seemed only a dream. The price of the adjoining fields was in his hand!

Ellen and Mrs. Sassaman cleaned the house and Ellen packed away her father's belongings, realization of the finality of death being now complete. Once she asked a question.

"Shall we leave the office as it is, Matthew?"

Matthew blinked; he was calculating at that moment the price which the trees would bring.

"I'll ask Millie what she wants," said he at last, bringing himself to consider Ellen's question. "And I'll ask Dr. Wescoe whether he would like to buy the medicines and the books."

"Not the books!" Ellen began to twist her hands together in the most excited way.

"Very well!" he answered impatiently. "As you like."

Mrs. Sassaman also approached with a question.

"When, then, am I to go?" Her large face was pale and her hands drooped from the wrist joints, like the front paws of a rabbit sitting upon its haunches. She might have been asking for the date of her execution.

"I'm going to be married on Saturday at meeting," said Matthew.

"Well, I guess I'll go then Saturday morning."

"You're going to your sister?" asked Matthew kindly, putting his hand into his pocket. "I'll pay you now—for the whole week, though it isn't due till Monday."

Mrs. Sassaman did not hold out her hand and Matthew laid the money in her lap, the last full salary he would have to pay for domestic service. Suddenly he was amazed. Mrs. Sassaman rose and the money dropped to the floor.