t bell. Springing to his feet, he hastened to the
spring, bathed his face, assumed a cheerful look and entered the house.

For the first time in his life he attempted the practice of deception,
and experienced the bitterness of carrying a guilty secret in his bosom.
How he worried through the morning meal and the prayer at the family
altar, he never knew, and he escaped with inexpressible relief to the
stable and the field to take up the duties of his daily life. He found
it plodding work, for the old inspirations to endeavor had utterly
vanished. He who had hitherto found toil a beatitude now moved behind
the plow like a common drudge.

Tired of the pain which he endured, he tried again and again to forget
the whole experience and to persuade himself that he was glad the
adventure had ended; but he knew in his heart of hearts that he had
failed to follow the gypsy, not because he did not really wish to, but
because he did not wholly dare. The consciousness that he was not only a
bad man but a coward, added a new element to the bitterness of the cup
he was drinking.

Each succeeding day was a repetition of the first, and became a painful
increment to his load of misery and unrest. The very world in which he
lived seemed to have undergone a transformation. The sunlight had lost
its glory, the flowers had become pale and odorless, the songs of the
birds dull and dispiriting.

What had really changed was the soul of the young recluse and mystic.
The consciousness of God had vanished from it; the visions of the
spiritual world no longer visited it; he ceased to pray in secret, and
the petitions which he offered at the family altar were so dull and
spiritless as even to excite the observation and comment of his little
nephew.

"Uncle Dave," remarked that fearless critic, "you pray as if you were
talking down a deep well."

No wonder that the child observed the fact upon which he alone had
courage to comment, for there is as great a difference between a prayer
issuing from the heart and one merely falling from the lips as between
water gushing from a fountain and rain dripping from a roof.

Some men pass their lives in the midst of environments where insincerity
would not have been so painful; but in a home and a community where sham
and hypocrisy were almost unknown these perpetual deceptions became more
and more intolerable with every passing hour. Nothing could be more
certain than that in a short time, like some f