e gift and consecration of their sons.

Toward dusk that day David's father and mother were sitting side by
side on the steps of their front porch. Some neighbors who had spent
the afternoon with them were just gone. The two were talking over in
low, confidential tones certain subjects discussed less frankly with
their guests. These related to the sermon of the morning, to the
university, to what boys in the neighborhood would probably be entered
as students. Their neighbors had asked whether David would go. The
father and mother had exchanged quick glances and made no reply.
Something in the father's mind now lay like worm-wood on the lips.

He sat leaning his head on his hand, his eyes on the ground, brooding,
embittered.

"If I had only had a son to have been proud of!" he muttered. "It's of
no use; he wouldn't go. It isn't in him to take an education."

"No," said the mother, comforting him resignedly, after a pause in
which she seemed to be surveying the boy's whole life; "it's of no use;
there never was much in David."

"Then he shall work!" cried the father, striking his knee with clenched
fist. "I'll see that he is kept at work."

Just then the lad came round from behind the house, walking rapidly.
Since dinner he had been off somewhere, alone, having it out with
himself, perhaps shrinking, most of all, from this first exposure to
his parents. Such an ordeal is it for us to reveal what we really are
to those who have known us longest and have never discovered us.

He walked quickly around and stood before them, pallid and shaking from
head to foot.

"Father!"--

There was filial dutifulness in the voice, but what they had never
heard from those lips--authority.

"I am going to the university, to the Bible College. It will be hard
for you to spare me, I know, and I don't expect to go at once. But I
shall begin my preparations, and as soon as it is possible I am going.
I have felt that you and mother ought to know my decision at once."

As he stood before them in the dusk and saw on their countenances an
incredible change of expression, he naturally mistook it, and spoke
again with more authority.

"Don't say anything to me now, father! And don't oppose me when the
time comes; it would be useless. Try to learn while I am getting ready
to give your consent and to obtain mother's. That is all I have to say."

He turned quickly away and passed out of the yard gate toward the barn,
for the evening feed