forward during the leisure of those summer
months. An authority from the north, from a New England university, who
had resigned his chair to come to Kentucky, attracted by the fair
prospects of the new institution. A great gray-bearded, eagle-faced,
square-shouldered, big-footed man: reserved, absorbed, asking to be let
alone, one of the silent masters. But David, desperate with
intellectual loneliness himself, and knowing this man to be a student
of the new science, one day had introduced himself and made inquiry
about entering certain classes in his course the following session.

The professor shook his head. He was going back to New England himself
the next year; and he moved away under the big trees, resuming his work.

As troubles had thickened about David, his case became discussed in
University circles; and he was stopped on the street one day by this
frigid professor and greeted with a man's grasp and a look of fresh
beautiful affection. His apostasy from dogmatism had made him a friend
of that lone thinker whose worship of God was the worship of Him
through the laws of His universe and not through the dogmas of men.

This professor--and Gabriella: they alone, though from different
motives, had been drawn to him by what had repelled all others. It was
his new relation to her beyond anything else that filled David this day
with his deep desire for peace with his past. She had such peace in
herself, such charity of feeling, such simple steadfast faith: she cast
the music of these upon the chords of his own soul. To the influence of
her religion she was now adding the influence of her love; it filled
him, subdued, overwhelmed him. And this morning, also out of his own
happiness he remembered with most poignant suffering the unhappiness of
his father. His own life was unfolding into fulness of affection and
knowledge and strength; his father's was closing amid the weakness and
troubles that had gathered about him; and he, David, had contributed
his share to these. To be reconciled to his father this day--that was
his sole thought.

It was about four o'clock. The house held that quiet which reigns of a
Sunday afternoon when the servants have left the kitchen for the cabin,
when all work is done, and the feeling of Sunday rest takes possession
of our minds. The winter sunshine on the fields seems full of rest; the
brutes rest--even those that are not beasts of burden. The birds appear
to know the day, and to make n