but let it be a
small place, says I, and let 'em keep there."

Abel Gallup was fifty years old and his wife over forty when they
married; staid, home-loving people both. Abel's business was that of
"a General Outfitter," and "The Golden Anchor" that was hung over the
entrance to the shop presided over the fortunes of a sound, going
concern. Only ready-made clothes were sold, only ready money was
accepted. They were well-to-do, and living simply above their shop in
the main street of Marlehouse were able to save largely.

Abel Gallup, however, was not merely a keen man of business and
successful tradesman. He was, in addition, an idealist and a dreamer
of dreams; but so shrewd and level-headed was he, that he kept the two
things quite apart. His business was never neglected, and he returned
to it all the fresher, inasmuch as in his off times his mind was
ardently concerned with other things.

He was a self-educated, self-made man, who had started as shop-boy and
risen to be proprietor. He had always been interested in politics, and
in their study had found the relaxation that others sought in art,
music, literature, or less intellectual pursuits. He was proud of his
liking for politics, counting it for much righteousness that he should
be able to find such joy in what he considered so useful and important
a matter. In fact, he had a habit of saying, "Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be
added unto you," with the comfortable reflection that such temporal
prosperity as had been added to him was probably a reward for his
abstention from all frivolous pleasures. He had no particular desire
to rise in the world, himself. When he married, comparatively late in
life, it was a woman of his own class, a comely, sensible,
"comfortable" woman, who would order his house well, and see to it that
there was "no waste."

She did all this; but she did infinitely more. She gave him a son, and
in that son all his hopes and dreams, his secret humilities and
unconscious vanities, his political devotions and antipathies were all
brought together and focussed in one great determination that this son
of his should have all that he had been denied; that in this son every
one of his own inarticulate aspirations should find a voice.

He was a Congregationalist and a prominent member of this sect, the
chief dissenting body in Marlehouse. He read little poetry and no
fiction, but h