ng will of youth he determined to go to Harvard,
and carried his point, though not without a degree of friction, which
alienated him still farther from his uncle.

It was, therefore, with immense surprise that, on Mr. Flint's death,
which occurred in Jonathan's junior year at college, the young man
learned that his uncle had left him his library and a substantial
share of his fortune. The terms of the will were not flattering. "To
my nephew, Jonathan Edwards Flint," so it ran, "I leave this amount,
realizing that the money left him by his father is inadequate for his
support, and that he will never have the energy to make a living for
himself."

The widow wrote a conventional note of combined self-condolence and
congratulation for Jonathan over his inheritance. Between the lines
Flint quite easily read that her latent aversion to him was augmented
by her husband's bequest.

"I have decided," she wrote, "to go at once to London, where I shall
probably reside for some years. I shall therefore strip my house of
furniture preparatory to renting. I will pack up the books which now
belong to you, and await your instructions as to the address to which
you would like them forwarded. Should we not meet again--and I presume
you will agree with me that it is hardly worth while to interrupt your
studies at Cambridge for a trip to New York before the steamer
sails--pray accept my best wishes for your future happiness and
prosperous career."

With this cool leave-taking Flint's association with his aunt had come
to an end. The books, which were his earliest friends, followed him
about from place to place, until at length they had found a home on
the walls of his study in "The Chancellor."

The work of his first solitary evening after his return from Nepaug
was to pull off the sheets and newspapers with which the caretaker of
his room had vainly striven to protect them against the all-pervading
dust of summer. He sat in his easy-chair, running over the titles with
the endeared eye of long familiarity.

There stood a set of Edwards's treatises, in eight ponderous volumes;
their leaves yellow with age, and cut only here and there at irregular
intervals. "Freedom of the Will" and "The Nature of Virtue" jostled
"Original Sin;" and "The History of Redemption" leaned up against
"God's Last End in the Creation of the World."

On the same shelf, as if with sarcastic attempt to mark the logical
sequence, Flint had placed a black-clad