turned to baser matters:

"I wonder if the jacket of my gray suit came back from that clumsy tailor.
I forgot to ask Ellen if an express package came."

And Nancy, whose look was bent far into the dusk, answered:

"Oh, I wonder if he will come back!"

BOOK THREE

The Age of Faith

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

THE PERVERSE BEHAVIOUR OF AN OLD MAN AND A YOUNG MAN

When old Allan Delcher slept with his fathers--being so found in the big
chair, with the worn, leather-bound Bible open in his lap--the revived
but still tender faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. And
this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm in which David is said
to describe the corruption of a natural man--a psalm beginning, "The
fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"

For it straightway appeared that the dead man had in life done a
perverse and inexplicable thing, to the bitter amazement of those who
had learned to trust him. On the day after he sent a blasphemous
grandson from his door he had called for Squire Cumpston, announcing to
the family his intention to make an entirely new will--a thing for which
there seemed to be a certain sad necessity.

When he could no longer be reproached it transpired that he had left "to
Allan Delcher Linford, son of one Clayton Linford," a beggarly pittance
of five thousand dollars; and "to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, I
give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, both real and
personal."

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 gods, 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 God came to disturb the first tender
rootlings of her new faith.

The husband of her niece had loyally end