in
her, from his own revolt against his father? Would it presently bear some
ugly fruit in her sons?

From a drawer in the table he took a little sheaf of folded sheets, and
read again the last letter that had come from her; read it not without
grim mutterings and oblique little jerks of the narrow old head, yet with
quick tender glows melting the sternness.

"You must not think I have ever regretted my choice, though every day of
my life I have sorrowed at your decision not to see me so long as I stayed
by my husband. How many times I have prayed God to remind you that I took
him for better or worse, till death should us part."

This made him mutter.

"Clayton has never in his life failed of kindness and gentleness to
me"--so ran the letter--"and he has always provided for us as well as a
man of his _uncommon talents_ could."

Here the old man sniffed in fine contempt.

"All last winter he had quite a class to teach singing in the evening and
three day-scholars for the violin, one of whom paid him in hams. Another
offered to pay either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel.
We needed money, but Clayton chose the portrait as a surprise to me. At
times he seems unpractical, but now he has started out in _business_
again--"

There were bitter shakings of the head here. Business! Standing in a buggy
at street-corners, jauntily urging a crowd to buy the magic
grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! first
playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald song to fetch them.
Business indeed! A pretty business!

"The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and learn a verse each
day. I have told them they may some day preach as you did if they will be
as good men as you are and study the Bible. They try to preach like our
preacher in the cunningest way. I wish you could see them. You would love
them in spite of your feeling against their father. I did what you
suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the
lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying. It does not seem
a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at
Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a surprise for me. Of
course, Bernal's is _very_ childish, but I think Allan's paper, for a
child of his age, shows a _grasp_ of religious matters that is _truly
remarkable_. I shall keep them studying the Bible daily. I should tell you
that I am now loo