s soul, howling hard upon
his trail.

The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising suddenly
he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his arm around
his shoulder and said, "Dear old dad! Good old boy you are, too. Good
stuff! What would I have been but for you? A puny, puling, wretched
little crock, afraid of anything that could spit at me. Do you remember
the old gander? I was near my eternal damnation that day."

"But you won out, my boy," said his father in a croaking voice, putting
his arm round his son.

"Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me stick
it since. May God forget me if I ever forget what you have done for me.
Shall we read now?"

He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the
leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It
was the parable of the talents.

"Rather hard on the failure," he said as he closed the book.

"No, not the failure," said his father, "the slacker, the quitter. It is
nature's law. There is no place in God's universe for a quitter."

"You are right, dad," said Barry. "Good-night."

He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest infancy.
Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman though he was,
could never bring himself to offer to lead the devotions of him at whose
knee he had kneeled every night of his life, as a boy, for his evening
prayer.

"Good-night, boy," said his father, holding him by the hand for a moment
or so. "We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering. That
part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never
need, and never shall be ours."

The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared and
his head erect.

"By Jove! He's no quitter," said his son to himself, as his eyes
followed him. "When he quits he'll be dead. God keep me from shaming
him!"

CHAPTER IV

REJECTED

The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a
number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited
their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church,
where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside,
driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the
shade of the church building.

Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then
a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the