on," he said.
But his voice was as the growl of a beast.

"The boy loved your girl, Mr. Matthews. It was as though he had
left his soul in the hills. Night and day he heard her calling.
The more his work was praised, the more his friends talked of
honors and planned his future, the keener was his suffering, and
most of all there was the shadow that had come between him and his
father, breaking the old comradeship, and causing them to shun
each other; though the father never knew why. The poor boy grew
morose and despondent, giving way at times to spells of the
deepest depression. He tried to lose himself in his work. He fled
abroad and lived alone. It seemed a blight had fallen on his soul.
The world called him mad. Many times he planned to take his life,
but always the hope of meeting her again stopped him.

"At last he returned to this country determined to see her at any
cost, and, if possible, gain her forgiveness and his father's
consent to their marriage. He came into the hills only to find
that the mother of his child had died of a broken heart.

"Then came the end. The artist disappeared, leaving a long,
pitiful letter, saying that before the word reached his father, he
would be dead. The most careful investigation brought nothing but
convincing evidence that the unhappy boy had taken his own life.
The artist knew that it would be a thousand times easier for the
proud man to think his son dead than for him to know the truth,
and he was right. Mr. Matthews, he was right. I cannot tell you of
the man's suffering, but he found a little comfort in the
reflection that such extravagant praise of his son's work had
added to the honor of the family, for the lad's death was held by
all to be the result of a disordered mind. There was not a whisper
of wrong doing. His life, they said, was without reproach, and
even his sad mental condition was held to be evidence of his great
genius.

"The minister was weak, sir. He knew something of the intellectual
side of his religion and the history of his church, but he knew
little, very little, of the God that could sustain him in such a
trial. He was shamefully weak. He tried to run away from his
trouble, and, because the papers had made so much of his work as a
preacher, and because of his son's fame, he gave only the first
part of his name, thinking thus to get away from it all for a
season.

"But God was to teach the proud man of culture and religious forms
a great les