s have quit goin' to bed and gettin'
up by it. If it wasn't for your poor mammy--"

"That's it--that's just it," groaned Tom. "It would kill her, even if
she was well."

"Nev' mind; you're here now, and I reckon that's the main thing. If she
gets up again, of course she'll have to know; but we won't cross that
bridge till we come to it. And Buddy, son, whatever happens, your old
pappy ain't goin' to believe that you'll be the first Gordon to die in
the gutter. You've got better blood in you than what that calls for."

Tom felt the lightening of his burden to some extent; but beyond was the
alternative of suffering, or causing suffering. He had never realized
until now how much he loved his mother; how large a place she had filled
in his life, and what a vast void there would be when she was gone. He
was yet too young and too self-centered to know that this is the
mother-cross: to live for love and to be crowned and enthroned oftenest
in memory.

For days,--days which brought back the boyhood agony of the time when he
had believed himself to be Ardea's murderer,--he went softly about the
house, sharing, with his father and his uncle, the watch in the
sick-room; doing what little there was to be done in dumb hopelessness,
and beating at times on the brazen gates of Heaven in sheer despair.
There was no answer to his prayers; in his inmost soul he knew there
would not be; but even in this the eternal query assailed him. Was it
for lack of faith that no whisper of reply came from the unseen world
beyond the veil? Or was it only because there was no ear to hear, no
voice to answer? He could not tell. He made sure he was doomed to live
and die, buffeting with these submerging waves of doubt--doubt of
himself on one hand, and of God on the other.

In that time of sore trial, his Uncle Silas's forbearance wiped out many
a score of boyish resentment. There was no word of reproach, still less
the harsh arraignment and condemnation to which he began to look forward
on the day when Doctor Tollivar had announced his purpose of writing
the facts to his brother in the faith. But Tom remarked that in the
daily morning and evening prayers his uncle spoke of him as a soul in
peril, and he wondered that this pointed reference, which once would
have stirred the pool of bitterness to its bottom, now left him unmoved
and immovable. Later, he knew it was because there was now no pool of
bitterness to be stirred; the spiritual well-spring