the door and locked it, his fortitude was gone.
Helplessly he fell upon his knees before the big chair--praying out his
grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his worn body.

When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he was dry-eyed and
apparently serene, but busy with papers at his table.

"Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher," she asked, "that he's
going away so queer and sudden?"

"_You_ pray for him, too, Clytie--you love him--but it's nothing to talk
of."

But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this.

"Oh, Mr. Delcher--" a look of horror grew big in her eyes--"You don't mean
to say he's gone and joined the Universalists?"

The old man shook his head.

"And he ain't a _Unitarian_?"

"No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it has left him rather
un--unconforming in some little matters--some details--doubtless his
doctrine is sound at core."

"But I supposed he'd learn everything off at that college, only I know he
never got fed half enough. What with all its studies and football and
clubs and things I thought it was as good as a liberal education."

"Too liberal, sometimes! Pray for Bernal--and we won't talk about it
again, Clytie, if you please."

Presently came Allan, who had heard the news.

"Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; that he is going
away."

"We have decided that is best."

"You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that Bernal was not as
sound doctrinally as you could wish. His mind, if I may say it, is a
peculiarly literal one. He seems to lack a certain spiritual
comprehensiveness--an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual
value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation for the revision
of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised
infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate
in its sentimentality--sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating.
He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality,
to the sad fate of our father--about whose present estate no churchman can
have any doubt. And then about our belief that even good works are an
abomination before God if performed by the unregenerate, the things I have
heard him--"

"Yes--yes--let us not talk of it further. Did you wish to see me
especially, Allan?"

"Well, yes, sir, I _had_ wished to, and perhaps now is the best moment. I
wanted to ask you, sir, how you