at you _are_ what I have
called you, because you have come into my house and practiced a
continuous and protracted deceit. You have abused the freedom granted
you as a guest to try to win my daughter away from everything worth
holding to and everything she has been taught. I was a blind fool. I was
a watchman fallen asleep at the gate--a sentry unfaithful at his post."
The voice of the minister settled into a clearer coherence as he went on
in deep bitterness. "You say I have accused you sternly. I am also
accusing myself sternly--but now the scales have fallen from my eyes and
I recognize my remissness. God grant I am not too late."

He paused for breath and his fingers clenched rigidly at the carvings of
his chair arms. "You know that my daughter is young and
inexperienced--an impressionable child not sufficiently seasoned in
wisdom to repudiate the gauzy lure of dangerous modernisms."

"Father," broke in Conscience during his accusing pause, "you are
starting out with statements that are unjust and untrue. I am not a
child and no one has corrupted my righteousness. We simply have
different ideas of life."

The minister did not take his eyes from the face of the young man and he
ignored the interruption of his daughter.

"I could not blame her: it was the natural spirit of unthinking youth.
You, however, did know the consequences. Here in my house--which you
must never reenter--you have incited my family against me to serve your
own covetous and lustful interests." Again he halted while the young
man, still standing as rigid as a bronze figure, his flushed face set
and his eyes holding those of his accuser with unblinking steadiness,
made no attempt to interrupt him.

"What, indeed, to you were mere questions of right or wrong? You had a
world of light and frivolous women to choose from, your own kind of
women who could dance and fritter life away in following fads that make
for license--but you must come into the household of a man who has tried
to fight God's battles; standing against these encroachments of Satan
which you advocate--and beguile my only daughter into telling me that I
must choose between surrender or the wretchedness of ending my life in
deserted loneliness."

Farquaharson, despite the storm which raged in his heart, answered with
every outward show of calmness, even with dignity.

"You accuse me of having made love to your daughter. For that I have no
denial. I have loved her since she was a