It was of no use to hark back to the revival and the heart-quaking experiences of a year agone.  Thomas Jefferson tried, but all that seemed to belong to another world and another life.  What he craved now was to be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and traveled Ardea.

Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a pronounced case of hero-worship, something to the disgust of the colder-hearted, older boy.  It did not last very long, nor did it leave any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into something like companionship, and there were bragging stories of boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the fire of discontent.

Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side was nigh.  It had been decided in the family council of two—­with a preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third—­that he was to be sent away to school, Chiawassee Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be pursued.

Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy, and had secretly gloried in it.  Here, at least, was a strong stream of his own craftsman’s blood flowing in the veins of his son.

“It’d be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make a poor preacher, Martha,” he objected; this for the twentieth time, and when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion.

“I know, Caleb; but you don’t understand,” was the invariable rejoinder.  “You know that side of him, because it’s your side.  But he is my son, too; and—­and Caleb, the Lord has called him!”

Gordon’s smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such discussions.

“Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don’t act as if he’d heard it.  As I’ve said, there’s plenty of time.  He’s only a little shaver yet.  Let him try the school in the city for a year ‘r so, goin’ and comin’ on the railroads, nights and mornin’s, like the Major’s gran’daughter.  After that, we might see.”

But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when that text, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, had been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she fought as those who will not be denied the victory.  Caleb yielded finally, but with some such hand-washing as Pilate did when he gave way to the pressure from without.

“I aim to do what’s for the best, Martha, but I own I hain’t got your courage.  You’ve been shovin’ that boy up the steps o’ the pulpit ever since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin’ to him, and maybe it’s all right.  I’ve never been over on your side o’ that fence, and I don’t know how things look over there.  But if it was my doin’s, I’d be prayin’ mighty hard to whatever God I believed in not to let me make a hypocrite out’n o’ Buddy.  I would so.”