tle in the road, a
fly caught in a spider's web, a young robin water-soaked and
bedraggled, appalled him, even as a boy, and he pondered them with sad
and questioning eyes long after his young companions had forgotten
them. Where had the light of their eyes fled? he asked himself. He
found no sport in killing any creature, and more than once he used all
his slender force to defend a cat from stoning; and yet he was known
to have joined the worst youths of his native town in secret
drinking-bouts, thereby acquiring the reputation of a liar and sneak,
as well as that of licentiate. At seventeen, just when the appetite
for liquor seemed beyond his control, a great "revivalist" won his
soul, as the saying went, and at twenty-three he assumed his first
pastorate.

Success as a pulpit orator was assured by the charm of his voice, the
magnetism of his manner. His head was singularly handsome, and often
when he spoke his face was irradiated like that of a seraph, and the
women of all his congregations adored him from the first glance,
embarrassing him with their ardent praises. That he had remained
faithful to his wife in spite of this adoration was evidence of her
great beauty of character. She was, indeed, his safeguard and his
hourly monitor while she lived.

For him she had sacrificed all her friends in the East. She came to
the mountains without a murmur, she bore with him, cheered him, upheld
him in a hundred ways--and when she died his world went black as
midnight. It was as if in the midst of a monster, interminable cavern
his one starlike light had gone out in his hand. For days he beat his
head against the wall, crying defiant curses against his God; but in
the end he sank into voiceless despair. Then it was, as he lay prone
and passive, that he began to hear mysterious whisperings and tappings
on the walls of his cavern of despond. He rose and listened. He groped
his way towards the dim light. He returned to the world of men. His
faith in the Scriptures was weakened; but he soon discovered a
wondrous change of heart towards those who claimed to be
intermediaries between the worlds of matter and of spirit. He turned
his attention to the study of the physical evidences of life after
death.

Up to that moment he had given but little credence to Mrs. Lambert's
half-hearted confidences concerning her own change of faith, and, as
Viola had been away at school much of the time, he had forgotten that
she was concerned i