“That thought haunted me,” went on the young man, a bit unsteadily, “and the contrast of the old clergyman and you made it seem as if you were there beside me.  It sounds unreasonable, but it was so.  I looked at him, old, poor, unsuccessful, narrow-minded, with hardly even the dignity of age, and I couldn’t help seeing a vision of you, every year of your life a glory to you, with your splendid mind, and splendid body, and all the power and honor and luxury that seem a natural background to you.  Proud as I am of you, it seemed cruel, and then it came to my mind like a stab that perhaps without me, your only son, all of that would—­well, what you said just now.  Would count for nothing—­that you would be practically, some day, just a lonely and pathetic old man like that other.”

The hand on the boy’s shoulder stirred a little.  “You thought right, Ted.”

“That was one impression the clergyman’s sermon made, and the other was simply his beautiful goodness.  It shone from him at every syllable, uninspired and uninteresting as they were.  You couldn’t help knowing that his soul was white as an angel’s.  Such sincerity, devotion, purity as his couldn’t be mistaken.  As I realized it, it transfigured the whole place.  It made me feel that if that quality—­just goodness—­could so glorify all the defects of his look and mind and manner, it must be worth while, and I would like to have it.  So I knew what was right in my heart—­I think you can always know what’s right if you want to know—­and I just chucked my pride and my stubbornness into the street, and—­and I caught the 7:35 train.”

The light of renunciation, the exhaustion of wrenching effort, the trembling triumph of hard-won victory, were in the boy’s face, and the thought, as he looked at it, dear and familiar in every shadow, that he had never seen spirit shine through clay more transparently.  Never in their lives had the two been as close, never had the son so unveiled his soul before.  And, as he had said, in all probability never would it be again.  To the depth where they stood words could not reach, and again for minutes, only the friendly undertone of the crackling fire stirred the silence of the great room.  The sound brought steadiness to the two who sat there, the old hand on the young shoulder yet.  After a time, the older man’s low and strong tones, a little uneven, a little hard with the effort to be commonplace, which is the first readjustment from deep feeling, seemed to catch the music of the homely accompaniment of the fire.

“It is a queer thing, Ted,” he said, “but once, when I was not much older than you, just such an unexpected chance influence made a crisis in my life.  I was crossing to England with the deliberate intention of doing something which I knew was wrong.  I thought it meant happiness, but I know now it would have meant misery.  On the boat was a young clergyman of about my own age making his first, very likely his