Though the husband of her niece wore publicly a look of faith unimpaired, and was thereby an example to her, Aunt Bell declared herself to be once more on the verge of believing that the proofs of an overseeing Providence, all-wise and all-loving, were by no means overwhelming; that they were, indeed, of so frail a validity that she could not wonder at people falling away from the Church. It was a trying time for Aunt Bell. She felt that her return to the shadow of the cross was not being made enough of by the One above. After years of running after strange G.o.ds, the Episcopal service as administered by Allan had prevailed over her seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven of romance--with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly reverent hints of physical culture--the spirit may be said to have blandished her. And now this turpitude in a man of G.o.d came to disturb the first tender rootlings of her new faith.

The husband of her niece had loyally endeavoured to dissuade her from this too human reaction.

"G.o.d has chosen to try me for a purpose, Aunt Bell," he said very simply. "I ought to be proud of it--eager for any test--and I am. True, in these last years I had looked upon grandfather's fortune as mine--not only by implied promise, but by all standards of right--even of integrity. For surely a man could not more nearly forfeit his own rights, in every moral aspect, than poor Bernal has--though I meant always to stand by him. So you see, I must conclude that G.o.d means to distinguish me by a test. He may even subject me to others; but I shall not wince. I shall welcome His trials. He turned upon her the face of simple faith."

"Did you speak to that lawyer about the possibility of a contest--of proving unsound mind?"

"I did, but he saw no chance whatever."

Aunt Bell hereupon surveyed her beautifully dimpled knuckles minutely, with an affectionate pride--a pride not uncritical, yet wholly convinced.

"Of course," added Allan after a moment's reflection, "there's no sense in believing that every bit of one's hard luck is sent by G.o.d to test one. One must in all reverence take every precaution to prove that the disaster is not humanly remediable. And this, I may say, I have done with thoroughness--with great thoroughness."

"Bernal may be dead," suggested Aunt Bell, brightening now from an impartial admiring of the toes of her small, plump slippers.

"G.o.d forbid that he should be cut off in his unbelief--but then, G.o.d's will be done. If that be true, of course, the matter is different.

Meantime we are advertising."

"I wish I had your superb faith, Allan. I wish Nancy had it...."

Her niece's husband turned his head and shoulders until she had the three-quarters view of his face.

"I have faith, Aunt Bell. G.o.d knows my unworthiness, even as you know it and I know it--but I have faith!"

The golden specks in his hazel eyes blazed with humility, and a flush of the same virtue mantled his perfect brow.

Such news of Bernal Linford as had come back to Edom, though meagre and fragmentary, was of a character to confirm the worst fears of those who loved him. The first report came within a year after his going, and caused a shaking of many heads.

An estimable farmer, one Caleb Webster, living on the outskirts of Edom, had, in a blameless spirit of adventure, toured the Far West, at excursion rates said to be astounding for cheapness. He had met the unfortunate young man in one of the newer mining towns along his exciting route.

"He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption," ran the gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one he'd fell in with out in them parts, that had gone there to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of nothin'!

Specially gamblin', which was done right in public, you might say, though the sharpers never skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two was at it every night, and finally they done just like I told the young fools they'd do--they lost all they had. They come into the Commercial House one night where I was settin' lookin' over a time-table, both seemin' down in the mouth. And all to once this sick young man--Mr.

Hoover, his name was--bust out cryin'--him bein' weak or mebbe in liquor or somethin'.

"'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down those yellow, sunk cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to git chipper again when he sees how Mr. Hoover is takin' it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left, Hoover? Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he says, 'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come my way--at four to one,' he says, or somethin' like that; them gamblin' terms is too much for me. 'Hain't you got nothin' at all left?' he says.

"Then this Hoover--still cryin', mind you--he says, 'Not a cent in the world except forty dollars in my trunk upstairs that I saved out to bury me with--and they won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried 'em.'

"It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about his own buryin', but it didn't phase Bernal none.

"'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, man, what could you do for forty dollars? Don't you know such things are very outrageous in price here? Forty _dollars_--why,' he says, 'the very best you could do would be one of these plain pine things with black cloth tacked on to it, and pewter trimmin's if _any_,' he says. 'Think of _pewter_ trimmin's!'

"'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at him, 'you run and dig up your old forty and I'll go back right now and win you out a full satin-lined, silver-trimmed one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate, and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the hands stopped at just the hour it happens,' he says. 'And you want to hurry,' he says, 'it ought to be done right away--with that cough of yours.'

"Me? Gosh, I felt awful--I wanted to drop right through the floor, but this Hoover, he says all at once, still snufflin', mind you: 'Say, that's all right,' he says. 'If I'm goin' to do it at all, I ought to do it right for the credit of my folks. I ought to give this town a flash of the right thing,' he says.

"Then he goes upstairs, leaning on the bal.u.s.ters, and gets his four ten-dollar bills that had been folded away all neat at the bottom of his trunk, and before I could think of anythin' wholesome to say--I was that scandalised--they was goin' off across the street to the Horseshoe Gamin' Parlour, this feller Hoover seemin' very sanguine and asking Bernal whether he was sure they was a party in town could do it up right after they'd went and won the money for it.

"Well, sir, I jest set there thinkin' how this boy Bernal Linford was brought up for a preacher, and 'Jest look at him now!' I says to myself--and I guess it was mebbe an hour later I seen 'em comin' out of the swingin' blinds in the door of this place, and a laffin' fit to kill themselves. 'High Mighty! they done it!' I says, watchin' 'em laff and slap each other on the back till Hoover had to stop in the middle of the street to cough. Well, they come into the Commercial office where I am and I says, 'Well, boys, how much did you fellers win?' and Hoover says, 'Not a cent! We lost our roll,' he says. 'It's the blamedest funniest thing I ever heard of,' he says, just like that, laffin' again fit to choke.

"'_I_ don't see anythin' to laff at,' I says. 'How you goin' to live?'

"'How's he goin' to die?' says Bernal, 'without a cent to do it on?'

"'That's the funny part of it,' says Hoover. 'Linford thought of it first. How _can_ I die now? It wouldn't be square,' he says--'me without a cent!'

"Then they both began to laugh--but me, I couldn't see nothin' funny about it.

"Wal, I left early next mornin', not wantin' to have to refuse 'em a loan."

CHAPTER II

HOW A BROTHER WAS DIFFERENT

In contrast with this regrettable performance of Bernal's, which, alas!

bore internal evidence of being a type of many, was the flawless career of Allan, the dutiful and earnest. Not only did he complete his course at the General Theological Seminary with great honour, but he was ordained into the Episcopal ministry under circ.u.mstances entirely auspicious. Aunt Bell confided to Nancy that his superior presence quite dwarfed the bishop who ordained him.

His ordination sermon, moreover, which his grandfather had been persuaded into journeying to hear, was held by many to be a triumph of pulpit oratory no less than an able yet not unpoetic handling of his text, which was from John--"The Truth shall make you free."

Truth, he declared, was the crowning glory in the diadem of man's attributes, and a subject fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. The essential nature of man being gregarious, how important that the leader of men should hold Truth to be like a diamond, made only the brighter by friction. The world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold of Sidney--all fighters for truth against the ma.s.ses who cannot think for themselves.

Truth was, indeed, a potent factor in civilisation. If only all truth-lovers could feel bound together by the sacred ties of fraternal good-will, independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, succeeding ages could but add a new l.u.s.tre to their present resplendent glory.

Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling on the world's cold cheek to make it burn forever. Why fear the revelation of truth?

Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day? Rome, too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish! They were, but they are not--for want of Truth. But might not we hope for a land where Truth would reign--from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South?

Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius.

The young man's final flight was observed by Aunt Bell to impress visibly even the bishop--a personage whom she had begun to suspect was the least bit cynical, perhaps from having listened to many first sermons.

"Standing one day," it began, "near the summit of one of the grand old Rocky Mountains that in primeval ages was elevated from ocean's depths and now towers its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure blue, I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of ill.u.s.tration of the thought in hand, the world cannot surpa.s.s. Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I saw, far down in the valley below, the tempest gathering. Soon the low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of increasing turbulence with Nature's elements. Thus the storm raged far below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature's own impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth. While we are in the valley below, we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated.

Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher.

"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible.

But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, _up_ and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, _up_ along the misty pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful sh.o.r.e and mingles with the breath of angels!"

Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon--had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should never have done. Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his father"--which was an invidious circ.u.mlocution, amounting almost to an epithet. And he had most weakly continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter--the G.o.dless boy whom he had driven from his door.

Not even the other bit of news that came a little later had sufficed to make him repair his injustice; and this, though the report came by the Reverend Arthur Pelham Gridley, inc.u.mbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at Edom, who could preach sermons the old man liked.

Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of the brethren at Denver, had brought this news: That Bernal Linford had been last seen walking south from Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a poor half-witted creature who had aroused some local excitement by declaring himself to be the son of G.o.d, speaking familiarly of the Deity as "Father."

As this impious person had been of a very simple mind and behaved inoffensively, rather shrinking from publicity than courting it, he had at first attracted little attention. It appeared, however, that he had presently begun an absurd pretence of healing the sick and the lame; and, like all charlatans, he so cunningly worked upon the imaginations of his dupes that a remarkable number of them believed that they actually had been healed by him. In fact, the nuisance of his operations had grown to an extent so alarming that thousands of people stood in line from early morning until dusk awaiting their turn to be blessed and "healed" by the impostor. Just as several of the clergy, said Mr.

Gridley, were on the point of denouncing this creature as anti-Christ and thus exploding his pretensions; and when the city authorities, indeed, appealed to by the local physicians, were on the point of suppressing him for disorderly conduct, and a menace to the public health, since he was encouraging the people to forsake their family physicians; and just as the news came that a long train-load of the variously suffering was on its way from Omaha, the wretched impostor had himself solved the difficulty by quietly disappearing. As he had refused to take money from the thousands of his dupes who had pressed it upon him in their fancied relief from pain, it was known that he could not be far off, and some curiosity was at first felt as to his whereabouts--particularly by those superst.i.tious ones who continued to believe he had healed them of their infirmities, not a few of whom, it appeared, were disposed to credit his blasphemous claim to have been sent by G.o.d.