came back from the
brook, his slender body leaning sideways from the weight of the dripping
bucket, told the shepherd of souls that he must be on his guard against
the snares of the flesh.

The boy's thin, dark face, so astonishingly like his father's, was lifted
toward the sky as he came stumbling up the path, but his eyes were
everywhere at once. Just before he reached the door, he set the bucket
down with a cry of ecstasy and darted to the edge of the garden, where the
peas were just thrusting green bowed heads through the crumbling earth. He
knelt above them breathless, he looked up to the maple-twigs, over which a
faint reddish bloom had been cast in the night, beyond to the lower slopes
of the mountain, delicately patterned with innumerable white stems of
young birch-trees, and clasped his hands to see that a shimmer of green
hung in their tops like a mist. His lips quivered, he laid his hand upon a
tuft of grass with glossy, lance-like blades, and stroked it.

His father came to the door and called him. "Nathaniel!"

He sprang up with guilty haste and went toward the house. A shriveling
change of expression came over him.

The minister began, "A wise son heareth his father's instructions; but a
scorner heareth not rebuke."

"I hear you, father."

"Why did you linger in the garden and forget your duty?"

"I--I cannot tell you, father."

"Do you mean you do not know why?"

"I cannot say I do not know."

"Then answer me."

Nathaniel broke out desperately, "I _cannot_, father--I know no words--I
was--it is so warm--the sun shines--the birches are out--I was glad----"

The minister bowed his head sadly. "Aye, even as I thought. Sinful lust of
the eye draggeth you down to destruction. You whose salvation even now
hangs in the balance, for whose soul I wrestle every night in prayer that
you may be brought to the conviction of sin, 'you were glad.' Remember the
words, 'If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy, may my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth.'"

Nathaniel made no reply. He caught at the door, looking up wretchedly at
his father. When the minister turned away without speaking again, he drew
a long breath of relief.

Breakfast was always a silent meal in the Everett house, but on Sabbath
mornings the silence had a heavy significance. The preacher was beginning
then to work himself up to the pitch of storming fervor which made his
sermons so notable, and his wife and son cowered under the u