outside the lonely burying ground, he threaded his way among the
myrtle-covered graves to the low mound which marked her resting place,
approached it, removed his hat and stood silently, reverently, by its
side.

There come to us all hours or moments of sudden and unexpected
disclosures of the hidden meaning of life. Such an one came to David,
there by that lowly grave. He saw, as in the light of eternity, the
grandeur and beauty of that character which the story of her sin and
suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He
did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible
that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to
furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a
child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he
awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,--rocks,
hills, rivers, stars, parents! They all seem to belong to the same order
of indestructible existence, and he would as soon expect to see the sun
blotted from heaven as a parent removed from earth! And when his ethical
perceptions awake, he has another experience of a similar character. His
father and mother stand to him for the very moral order itself! To his
mind, it is inconceivable that they should ever err, and the bare
suggestion that those august and venerable beings can really sin, fills
him with horror and incredulity. If he, therefore, sometime learns that
they have committed a trifling indiscretion, he trembles, and if, in
some tragic moment, irresistible proof is brought to bear on him that
they have been guilty of a dark and desperate deed, the whole moral
system seems to undergo a sudden and final collapse! There is no longer
any standing-ground beneath his feet and he could not be driven into a
deeper despair if God himself had yielded to temptation. This discovery
and this despair had fallen to the lot of David, and he had cherished
the impressions, formed in that dark hour, through all these many
months. But now, returning to the scenes of his boyhood and bringing
back his burdens of care and sin, bringing back also his deepened
experience of life and his enlarged ability, to comprehend its
difficulties and sorrows, he suddenly saw the conduct and character of
his mother in a new light. He, too, had met temptation, had fallen, had
gone down into the depths, and in that awful and interpretative
experience, comprehe