“Not even if it should be the grave under the pine yonder?” asked the other in a low voice.

Old Matt looked at him in a half frightened way, as though, without knowing why, he feared what the shepherd would say next.  Mr. Howitt felt the look and hesitated.  He was like one on a desperate mission in the heart of an enemy’s country, feeling his way.  Was the strong man’s passion really tame?  Or was his fury only sleeping, waiting to destroy the one who should wake it?  Who could tell?

The old scholar looked away to Dewey Bald for strength.  “Mr. Matthews,” he said, “you once told me a story.  It was here on this porch when I first came to you.  It was a sad tale of a great crime.  To-night I know the other aide of that story.  I’ve come to tell you.”

At the strange words, Aunt Mollie’s face turned as white as her apron.  Old Matt grasped the arms of his chair, as though he would crush the wood, as he said shortly, “Go on.”

At the tone of his voice, the old shepherd’s heart sank.

CHAPTER XLI.

The other side of the story.

With a prayer in his heart for the boy who lay dying in that strange underground chamber, the artist’s father began.

“It is the story, Mr. Matthews, of a man and his only son, the last of their family.  With them will perish—­has perished one of the oldest and proudest names in our country.

“From his childhood this man was taught the honored traditions of his people, and, thus trained in pride of ancestry, grew up to believe that the supreme things of life are what his kind call education, refinement, and culture.  In his shallow egotism, he came to measure all life by the standards of his people.

“It was in keeping with this that the man should enter the pulpit of the church of his ancestors, and it was due very largely, no doubt, to the same ancestral influence that he became what the world calls a successful minister of the gospel.  But Christianity to him was but little more than culture, and his place in the church merely an opportunity to add to the honor of his name.  Soon after leaving the seminary, he married.  The crowning moment of his life was when his first born—­a boy—­was laid in his arms.  The second child was a girl; there were no more.

“For ten years before her death the wife was an invalid.  The little girl, too, was never strong, and six months after they buried the mother the daughter was laid beside her.

“You, sir, can understand how the father lavished every care upon his son.  The first offspring of the parents’ love, the sole survivor of his home, and the last to bear the name of a family centuries old, he was the only hope of the proud man’s ambition.

“The boy was a beautiful child, a delicate, sensitive soul in a body of uncommon physical grace and strength, and the proud father loved to think of him as the flower of long ages of culture and refinement.  The minister, himself, jealously educated his son, and the two grew to be friends, sir, constant companions.  This, also, you will understand—­you and your boy.  But with all this the young man did not follow his father in choosing his profession.  He—­he became an artist.”