ll Christianity has built some of the most godlike heroes the
world has ever seen."

"You're right sure now that it is a fairy story, son?" said the old man,
a little wistfully.

"There is no doubt about that," was the decisive rejoinder. "There is
room for credulity only in ignorance. Any thinking person who is brought
face to face with the materialistic facts--"

Caleb held up a toil-hardened hand.

"Hold on, Buddy; you'll have to pick a place where the water deepens
sort o' gradually for the old man or you'll have him flounderin'. I
reckon I been sittin' up on the bank all my life, waitin' for somebody
to come along and pole the bottom for me in that pool."

"No," said Tom definitively. "There isn't any bank to that pool. You're
in it, or you are out of it; one or the other. That was the notion I
took with me to Boston. I thought I'd get well up above the eternal
wrangle and look down on it--wouldn't believe, wouldn't disbelieve. It
can't be done. Jesus, Himself, said, if they've reported Him straight,
'He that is not with me is against me.'"

"Well," said the father, still deprecating, "that's some farther along
than I've ever been able to get--not sayin' that I wouldn't be willin'
to go." And then: "You don't allow to argue with your mammy about these
things, do you, Tom?"

Tom's rejoinder was gravely considerate.

"It is a sealed book between us, now, pappy. She knows--and knows it
can't be helped. If I wasn't her son, I hope I should still be the last
person in the world to try to shake her faith--or any one's, for that
matter. I have merely turned my own back--because I had to."

The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was
half-appealing.

"What was it turned you, son?--nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?"

Tom shook his big blond head slowly.

"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for
a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are
responsible for the best there is in me--and that's the questioning
part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve
or confirm it."

"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly.

"His name is Bauer--the man I've been rooming with. He is a German
biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His
people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple
of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German