“You and Mrs. Ranger,” Hargrave went on, “have had a long life, full of the consciousness of useful work well done.  Your industry, your fitness for the just use of God’s treasure, has been demonstrated, and He has made you stewards of much of it.  And now approaches the final test, the greatest test, of your fitness to do His work.  In His name, my old friend, what are you going to do with His treasure?”

Hiram Ranger’s face lighted up.  The peace that was entering his soul lay upon the tragedy of his mental and physical suffering soft and serene and sweet as moonlight beautifying a ruin.  “That’s why I sent for you, Mark,” he said.

“Hiram, are you going to leave your wealth so that it may continue to do good in the world?  Or, are you going to leave it so that it may tempt your children to vanity and selfishness, to lives of idleness and folly, to bring up their children to be even less useful to mankind than they, even more out of sympathy with the ideals which God has implanted?  All of those ideals are attainable only through shoulder-to-shoulder work such as you have done all your life.”

“God help me!” muttered Hiram.  The sweat was beading his forehead and his hands were clasped and wrenching each at the other, typical of the two forces contending in final battle within him.  “God help me!”

“Have you ever looked about you in this town and thought of the meaning of its steady decay, moral and physical?  God prospered the hard-working men who founded it; but, instead of appreciating His blessings, they regarded the wealth He gave them as their own; and they left it to their children.  And see how their sin is being visited upon the third and fourth generations!  Industry has been slowly paralyzing.  The young people, whose wealth gave them the best opportunities, are leading idle lives, are full of vanity of class and caste, are steeped in the sins that ever follow in the wake of idleness—­the sins of selfishness and indulgence.  Instead of being workers, leading in the march upward, instead of taking the position for which their superior opportunities should have fitted them, they set an example of idleness and indolence.  They despise their ancestry of toil which should be their pride.  They pride themselves upon the parasitism which is their shame.  And they set before the young an example of contempt for work, of looking on it as a curse and a disgrace.”

“I have been thinking of these things lately,” said Hiram.

“It is the curse of the world, this inherited wealth,” cried Hargrave.  “Because of it humanity moves in circles instead of forward.  The ground gained by the toiling generations, is lost by the inheriting generations.  And this accursed inheritance tempts men ever to long for and hope for that which they have not earned.  God gave man a trial of the plan of living in idleness upon that which he had not earned, and man fell.  Then God established the other plan, and through it man has