om he had been so proud years ago! He
went back suddenly to that old time, and seemed to see them all again as
little children, a merry household; and his pale, delicate Fred, for
whom his heart beat so anxiously. How they had welcomed his coming!--a
son to hand down the name, a son to lean upon in his old age. Nay, those
were the extremes of life: why should not men count on their sons
through the burden and heat of middle life? Why wait until the evening
for comfort?

Where was he now? Did he think of the one who had toiled that he might
spend? for, now that he looked at it with awesome calmness, like a thing
standing apart, it was one long, dreary pilgrimage of toil. To what end?
Was gathering together riches the noblest use of a man made in God's
image? Ah, how poor and paltry an aim!

Surely he had done something beside that! A pleasant home of culture and
artistic beauty, a circle of refined people gathered about him, the evil
and want and woe of the world shut carefully out by silken curtains and
plate-glass. His daughters he had been proud of. No _mesalliance_, no
common tastes, as he had sometimes fancied that he had detected in that
pretty little Sylvie Barry. And his son?

There had been no positive evil in his life. A young man's follies
perhaps, but few vices, if any, thank God! He would never be a
libertine, a drunkard, a gambler, a thief. But was negative goodness
all? These twenty-four years spent in shaping and culturing, but to what
end? Could he call him back from his pleasure now, and have him take up
this struggle grown too heavy to fight single-handed? and would he be
manful, brave, clear-sighted, and unrepining? No. He felt the change
would be too great. The soul so used to ease and luxury, fine linen and
soft couches, delicate appetites, indolent habits, intellectual pursuits
and graces, to be put in rough harness of business at once, would be
cruel, nay, worse, like chaining humming-birds to a dray-wagon. And
Irene, flitting like a butterfly through elegant _salons_, how would she
be content with poverty and a cottage?

And was this all the work of his own hands? Had he laid up no treasure
against the time of adversity, made no homes into which he might be
received in his trial hour? For two years he had struggled manfully,
earnestly; and all this time at his very gate there had been a traitor,
turning aside the stream until there was nothing but a barren desert
left.

The crown of his lif