“I’ll stop there, if you wish, leaving you to divine what other change has taken place.”

“There, there,” soothed the old man, seizing the shoulders once more with his strong grip—­“no more now, boy.  It was a hard thing, I know.  The consciousness of God’s majesty comes often in that way, and often it overwhelms the unprepared.  It was hard, but it will leave you more a man; your soul and your faith will both survive.  Do what I have told you—­as if you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, who never could keep his hair neatly brushed like Allan, and would always moon in corners.  Go finish your course.  Another year, when your mind has new fortitude from your recreated body, we will talk these matters as much as you like.  Yet I will tell you one thing to remember—­just one, as you have told me one:  You are in a world of law, of unvarying cause and effect; and the integrity of this law cannot be destroyed, nor even impaired, by any conceivable rebellion of yours.  Yet this material world of law is but the shadow of the reality, and that reality is God—­the moral law if you please, as relentless, as inexorable, as immutable in its succession of cause and effect as the physical laws more apparent to us; and as little to be overthrown as physical law by any rebellion of disordered sentiment.  The word of this God and this Law is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, wherein is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.

“Now,” continued the old man, more lightly, “each of us has something to remember—­and let each of us pray for the other.  Go, be a good boy—­but careless and happy—­for a year.”

The old man had his way, and the two boys went presently back to their studies.

The girl, Nancy, remembered them well for the things each had said to her.

Allan, who, though he constantly praised her, had always the effect of leaving her small to herself.  “Really, Nance,” he said, “without any joking, I believe you have a capacity for living life in its larger aspects.”

And on the last day, Bernal had said, “Nance, you remember when we were both sorry you couldn’t be born again—­a boy?  Well, from what the old gentleman says, one learns in time to bow to the ways of an inscrutable Providence.  I dare say he’s right.  I can see reasons now, my girl, why it was well that you were not allowed to meddle with Heaven’s allotment of your sex.  I’m glad you had to remain a girl.”

One compliment pleased her.  The other made her tremble, though she laughed at it.

CHAPTER IV

A FEW LETTERS

(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)

Dear Grandfather: The college year soon ends; also my course.  I think you hoped I wouldn’t want again to talk of those matters.  But it isn’t so.  I am primed and waiting, and even you, old man, must listen to reason.  The world of thought has made many revolutions since you shut yourself into that study with your weekly church paper.  So be ready to hear me.