read it in a book, but we wouldn't submit to it. We're too inquiring. If
a god leaned out of a cloud of fire and spoke to us to-day we'd put the
spectroscope on his cloud, get a moving picture of him, and take his
voice on a phonograph record; and we wouldn't believe him if he talked
against experience."

Dave surveyed the obscure small-towners with a last tolerant smile and
withdrew.

"My!" said Gideon, which for him was strong speech.

"Talks like an atheist," said Sharon.

"Mustn't judge him harshly," warned Harvey D.

* * * * *

So it came that Merle Dalton Whipple, born Cowan, was rather
peremptorily summoned to meet these older Whipples at another
conference. It was politely termed a conference by Harvey D., though
Sharon warmly urged a simpler description of the meeting, declaring that
Merle should be told he was to come home and behave himself. Harvey D.
and Gideon, however, agreed upon the more tactful summons. They
discussed, indeed, the propriety of admitting Sharon to the conference.
Each felt that he might heedlessly offend the young intellectual by
putting things with a bluntness for which he had often been conspicuous.
Yet they agreed at last that he might be present, for each secretly
distrusted his own firmness in the presence of one with so strong an
appeal as their boy. They admonished Sharon to be gentle. But each hoped
that if the need rose he would cease to be gentle.

Merle obeyed the call, and in the library of the Whipple New Place,
where once he had been chosen to bear the name of the house, he listened
with shocked amazement while Harvey D., with much worried straightening
of pictures, rugs, and chairs, told him why Whipple money could no
longer meet the monthly deficit of the _New Dawn_. The most cogent
reason that Harvey D. could advance at first was that there were too
many Liberty Bonds to be bought.

Merle, with his world-weary gesture, swept the impeding lock from his
pale brow and set pained eyes upon his father by adoption. He was unable
to believe this monstrous assertion. He stared his incredulity. Harvey
D. winced. He felt that he had struck some defenseless child a cruel
blow. Gideon shot the second gun in this unhuman warfare.

"My boy, it won't do. Harvey is glossing it a bit when he says the money
is needed for bonds. You deserve the truth--we are not going to finance
any longer a magazine that is against all our traditions and all our
s