as he had intended to be; his ideal of righteousness, being of the
obtainable sort, had been realised and strictly adhered to. The one
disappointment of his life was the lack of those sturdy sons and
daughters who, to his mind, should have surrounded the virtuous man in
his old age. They had not come into the world. His wife, a good woman
and energetic helpmeet, had brought him but the one studious son.

Ephraim was thirty-two years of age when a young girl, strong,
beautiful, impetuous, entered under the sloping eaves of his father's
huge gray shingle roof. The girl was a niece on the maternal side. Her
New England mother had, by freak of love, married a reckless young
Englishman of gentle blood who was settled on a Canadian farm. Pining
for her puritan home, she died early. The father made a toy of his
daughter till he too died in the fortified town of Kingston, on the
northern shore of Lake Ontario. No other relatives coming forward to
assume his debts or to claim his child, their duty in the matter was
clear to the minds of the Croom household, and the girl was sent for.
Her name was Susannah, but she herself gave it the softer form that she
had been accustomed to hear; when she first entered the sitting-room of
the grave Croom family trio, like a sunbeam striking suddenly through
the clouds on a dark day, she held out her hand and her lips to each in
turn, saying, "I am Susianne."

That first time Ephraim kissed her. It was done in surprise and
embarrassed formality. He knew, when the moment was past that his
parents had perceived that Susannah needed more decorous training. He
concurred in believing this to be desirable, for the manners that had
surrounded him were very stiff. Yet the memory of the greeting remained
with him, a thing to be wondered at while he turned the whispering
leaves of his great books.

Susannah had travelled from the Canadian fort in the care of the
preacher Finney. He was a revivalist of great renown, possessing a
lawyer-like keenness of intellect, much rhetorical power, and Pauline
singleness of purpose. That night he ate and slept in the house.

The original Calvinism of the Croom household had already been modified
by the waves of Methodist revival from the Eastern States. Finney was an
Independent, but Martha Croom had an abounding respect for him; his
occasional visits were epochs in her life. She had prepared many baked
meats for his entertainment before the evening of his arriv