But I fear you will not want me
to stay when you know what I've come to tell you this evening."

The mountaineer straightened his huge form as he returned, "Dad,
there ain't nothin' on earth or in hell could change what we think
of you, and we don't want to hear nothin' about you that you don't
like to tell us. We ain't a carin' what sent you to the hills.
We're takin' you for what you are. And there ain't nothin' can
change that."

"Not even if it should be the grave under the pine yonder?" asked
the other in a low voice.

Old Matt looked at him in a half frightened way, as though,
without knowing why, he feared what the shepherd would say next.
Mr. Howitt felt the look and hesitated. He was like one on a
desperate mission in the heart of an enemy's country, feeling his
way. Was the strong man's passion really tame? Or was his fury
only sleeping, waiting to destroy the one who should wake it? Who
could tell?

The old scholar looked away to Dewey Bald for strength. "Mr.
Matthews," he said, "you once told me a story. It was here on this
porch when I first came to you. It was a sad tale of a great
crime. To-night I know the other side of that story. I've come to
tell you."

At the strange words, Aunt Mollie's face turned as white as her
apron. Old Matt grasped the arms of his chair, as though he would
crush the wood, as he said shortly, "Go on."

At the tone of his voice, the old shepherd's heart sank.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.

With a prayer in his heart for the boy who lay dying in that
strange underground chamber, the artist's father began.

"It is the story, Mr. Matthews, of a man and his only son, the
last of their family. With them will perish--has perished one of
the oldest and proudest names in our country.

"From his childhood this man was taught the honored traditions of
his people, and, thus trained in pride of ancestry, grew up to
believe that the supreme things of life are what his kind call
education, refinement, and culture. In his shallow egotism, he
came to measure all life by the standards of his people.

"It was in keeping with this that the man should enter the pulpit
of the church of his ancestors, and it was due very largely, no
doubt, to the same ancestral influence that he became what the
world calls a successful minister of the gospel. But Christianity
to him was but little more than culture, and his place in the
church merely an opportunity to add to