er now. And so God keep
them in health and bless them. And he was their grateful son, who too
often had been a care to them, who could never forget the sacrifices
they had made to send him to college, and whose only wish was that he
might not cause them any disappointment in the future.

This letter drew a quick reply from his father. He returned the money,
saying that he had done better on the farm than he had expected and did
not need it, and that he had a man employed, his former slave. Sorry as
they were not to see him that summer, still they were glad of his
desire to study through vacation. His own life had not been very
successful; he had tried hard, but had failed. For a longtime now he
had been accepting the failure as best he could. But compensation for
all this were the new interests, hopes, ambitions, which centred in the
life of his son. To see him a minister, a religious leader among
men--that would be happiness enough for him. His family had always been
a religious people. One thing he was already looking forward to: he
wanted his son to preach his first sermon in the neighborhood church
founded by the lad's great-grandfather--that would be the proudest hour
of his life and in the lad's mother's. There were times in the past
when perhaps he had been hard on him, not understanding him; this only
made his wish the greater to aid him now in every way, at any cost.
When they were not talking of him at home, they were thinking of him.
And they blessed God that He had given them such a son. Let him not be
troubled about the future; they knew that he would never disappoint
them.

David sat long immovable before that letter.

One other Bible student remained. On the campus, not far from the
dormitory, stood a building of a single story, of several rooms. In one
of these rooms there lived, with his family, that tall, gaunt, shaggy,
middle-aged man, in his shiny black coat and paper collars, without any
cravats, who had been the lad's gentle monitor on the morning of his
entering college. He, too, was to spend the summer there, having no
means of getting away with his wife and children. Though he sometimes
went off himself, to hold meetings where he could and for what might be
paid him; now preaching and baptizing in the mountains; now back again,
laboring in his shirt-sleeves at the Pentateuch and the elementary
structure of the English language. Such troubles as David's were not
for him; nor science nor doubt.