ing at the livid moon sinking behind the
great house.

"Is there more joy in this house than in any other house in town,
John--answer me squarely, son--answer me," she cried. He shook his
head sadly and sighed. "A mother, whose heart bleeds every hour as she
sees her son torturing himself with footless remorse; that is one. A
heart-broken, motherless girl, whose lover has been torn away from her
by her father's vanity and her own pride, and whose mother has been
taken as a pawn in the game her father played with no motive, no
benefit, nothing but to win his point in a miserable little game of
politics; that is number two. And a man who should be young for twenty
years yet, who should have been useful for thirty years--and now what
is he? powerless, useless, wretched, lonely, who spends his time
walking about fighting against God, that he may prove his own wisdom
and nothing more."

"Mother," cried Barclay, petulantly, "I can't stand this--that you
should turn on me--now." He broke away from her, and stood alone.
"When I need you most, you reproach me. When I need sympathy, you
scorn all that I have done. You can't prove your God. Why should I
accept Him?"

The gaunt old woman stretched out her arms and cried: "Oh, John
Barclay, prove your god. Tell him to come and give you a moment's
happiness--set him to work to restore your good name; command him to
make Jeanette happy. These things my God can do! Let your Mammon," she
cried with all the passion of her soul, "let your Mammon come down and
do one single miracle like that." Her voice broke and she sobbed.
"What a tower of Babel--an industrial Babel, you are building,
John--you and your kith and kind. The last century gave us
Schopenhauers and Kants, all denying God, and this one gives us
Railroad Kings and Iron Kings and Wheat Kings, all by their works
proclaiming that Mammon has the power and the glory and the Kingdom. O
ye workers of iniquity!" she cried, and her voice lifted, "ye wicked
and perverse--"

She did not finish, but broken and trembling, her strength spent and
her faith scorned, she sank on her knees by a marble urn on the
terrace and sobbed and prayed. When she rose, the dawn was breaking,
and she looked for a moment at her son, who had been sitting near her,
and cried: "Oh, my boy, my little boy that I nursed at my breast--let
Him in, He is your friend--and oh, my God, sustain my faith!"

Her son came to her side and led her into the house. But he