n't heard of anybody goin' away," said Caleb the literal.

"Nor I," said Tom curtly; and the conversation paused until the
iron-master had deliberately refilled and lighted his corn-cob.

"It's a-plenty onprofitable, Buddy, don't you reckon?" he ventured,
referring to the social diversion.

There was a picric quality in Tom's tone when he replied: "The calling
act?--I have certainly found it so to-night." Then, more humanely: "But
as a means of relaxation it beats sitting here in the dark and stewing
over to-morrow's furnace run--which is what you've been doing."

Caleb chuckled. "That's one time you missed the whole side o' the barn,
Buddy. I was settin' here wonderin' if a man ever did get over bein'
surprised at the way his children turn out."

"Meaning me?" said Tom, knocking the ash from his pipe and feeling in
his pockets for a cigar.

"Yes, meanin' you, son. You've somehow got away from me again in these
last six months 'r so."

"I'm older, pappy; and I hope I'm bigger and broader. I was a good bit
of a kid a year ago; tough in some spots and fearfully and wonderfully
raw in others. Do you recollect how I climbed up on the fence the first
dash out of the box and read off the law to you about religion and such
things?"

"I reckon so," said the iron-master. "And that's one o' the things--I
ain't heard you cuss out the hypocrites once since you got back. Have
you gone back on the Dutchman and his argyment?"

"Bauer, you mean?--no; only on the nullifying part of it. Bauer's
no-religion doctrine is a doctrine of denial, and it's pure theory. What
we have to deal with in this world is the practical human fact, and a
good half of that is tangled up with some sort of religious belief or
sentiment. At least, that's the way I'm finding it."

"It's the way it _is_," said Caleb sententiously. And after a pause: "I
allow it helps some, too; greases the wheels some if it don't do
anything more."

"It does much more," was the quick reply. "When you find it in a woman
like Ardea Dabney, it raises her to the seventh power angelic. It is
only when you find it, or some ghastly imitation of it, in such people
as the Farleys...." He changed the subject abruptly. "You said the
Dabneys had gone up on the mountain for the summer, didn't you?"

"Yes. I believe they're allowin' to come back in August, in time for the
weddin'."

The younger man's wince was purely involuntary. He had been trying
latterly to train up to the d