s hands, he leaned
across the table and laid his palm upon her fingers as they rested on
the cloth beside her plate. Both palm and fingers were roughened and
callous with hard work; but mother and son both were of that
fast-vanishing class of folk who spell their _Education_ with the
largest sort of capital letter. Their minds were alike, in that they
both believed the work worth while, for the sake of all that it would
be able to accomplish.

"Thank you, mother," Scott said unsteadily. "I am glad you feel so,
even if I don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became
practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he
went on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at
the bald worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half
more at college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it,
I suppose. For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through
alone, without a cent from you; but is it quite worth while? According
to Professor Mansfield, if I keep steady, I can go straight from my
degree into the laboratory as a paid demonstrator. It wouldn't be much
pay, of course. Still, it would help along, and I could go on studying
under him, all the time I was about it. By the time three years were
over, the three years I would have to spend in the divinity school, I
should be, ought to be, well upon my feet and walking towards a future
of my own."

His mother drew a long breath, as the swift torrent of words came to an
end. Then,--

"And at the end of twenty years, my son? That is the real question."

Scott's enthusiasm all went out of him. His assent came heavily.

"Yes," he admitted. "Yes. I suppose that is the real question, mother.
It all depends--"

She looked up at him sharply, as if in haste to probe the limits of his
hesitation.

"Depends?" she echoed.

"Upon the way you feel about it, mother."

She shook her head.

"Not that," she offered swift correction; "but upon the question which
is right. You are at the forking of the roads, the narrow and the
broad. You are almost a man, Scott. I have no right to decide this for
you; you must make your own choice for yourself. However, my son, you
know my dreams for you; you know my prayers."

And Scott Brenton, boy as he was in years, bowed his head in grave
assent, and then and there made his great renunciation. He did know his
mother's dreams; he had overheard, albeit unknown to her, her