admitted.
"This is why God thinks of you, and summons you to His Holy Land."

"At first," the farmer went on, "I lived in a hovel that wasn't
much better than a charcoaler's hut. It was made of unstripped
logs, with only sod for a roof. I could never make that but water
tight; so the rains always came in. It was mighty uncomfortable,
especially at night. The cow and the horse fared no better than I;
the whole of the first winter they were housed in a mud cave that
was as dark as a cellar."

"Father, how can you be so attached to a place where you have
suffered such hardships?"

"But only think of the joy of it when I was able to build a big
barn for the animals, and when year by year my livestock increased
so that I was always having to add new extensions for housing them.
If I were not going to sell the place now, I should have to put a
new roof on the barn. This would have been just the time to do it--
as soon as I'd finished with the sowing."

"Father, you are to do your sowing in that land where some seeds
fall among thorns, some on stony ground, some by the wayside, and
some on good ground."

"And the old cottage," the farmer pursued, "which I built after the
first hut, I had thought of pulling down this year, to put up a
fine new dwelling house. What's to be done now with all the timber
that we two hauled home in the winter? It was mighty tough work
getting it down. The horses were hard driven, and so were we."

The son began to feel troubled. He thought his father was slipping
away from him. He feared that the old man was not going to offer
his property to the Lord in the right spirit. "Well," he argued,
"but what are new houses and barns as compared with the blessed
privilege of living a pure life among people who are of one mind?"

"Hallelujah!" cried the father. "Don't you suppose I know that a
wonderful portion has been allotted to us? Am I not on my way to
the works to sell my property to the Company? When I come back this
way everything will be gone, and I shall have nothing I can call
mine."

The son did not reply, but he was pleased to hear that his father
still held to his decision.

Presently they came to a farm beautifully situated on a hill. There
was a white-painted dwelling house, with a balcony and a veranda,
and round the house were tall poplars whose pretty silvery stems
were swollen with sap.

"Look!" said the farmer. "That was just the sort of house I meant
to have--with a veran