who was my
principal instructor until I was about fourteen years of age, was a
woman of refinement and culture. My mother and I lived at her father's
house--a beautiful country home; but even while a mere child I became
aware that there was some kind of an unpleasant secret in our family. My
grandfather would never allow my father's name mentioned, and he had
little love for me as his child; but my earliest recollections of my
mother are of her kneeling with me night after night in prayer, teaching
me to love and revere the father I had never known, who, she told me,
was 'gone away,' and to pray always for his welfare and for his return.
At fourteen I was sent away to a preparatory school, and afterwards to
college. Then, as I developed a taste for mineralogy and metallurgy, I
took a course in the Columbian School of Mines. By this time I had
learned that while it was generally supposed my mother was a widow,
there were those, my grandfather among them, who believed that my father
had deserted her. My first intimation of this was an insinuation to that
effect by my grandfather himself, soon after my graduation. I was an
athlete and already had a good position at a fair salary, and so great
was my love and reverence for my father's name that I told the old
gentleman that nothing but his white hairs saved him from a sound
thrashing, and that at the first repetition of any such insinuation I
would take my mother from under his roof and provide a home for her
myself. That sufficed to silence him effectually, for he idolized her.
After this little episode I went to my mother and begged her to tell me
the secret regarding my father."

The young man paused for a moment, his dark eyes gazing earnestly into
the clear gray eyes watching him intently; then, without shifting his
gaze, he continued, in low tones:

"She told me that about a year before my birth she and my father were
married against her father's will, his only objection to the marriage
being that my father was poor. She told me of their happy married life
that followed, but that my father was ambitious, and the consciousness
of poverty and the fact that he could not provide for her as he wished
galled him. She told me how, when there was revealed to them the promise
of a new love and life within their little home, he redoubled his
efforts to do for her and hers, and then, dissatisfied with what he
could accomplish there, went out into the new West to build a home fo