. But when his faith began to die--it was dreadful. It was
as though some hidden poison was killing him, right before my eyes."

"What made his faith die?" asked Jerry, curiously.

"Because he grew to distrust his fellowmen. That second visit to Peter
Westley----" Mrs. Travis spoke quickly to hide her bitterness. "He was
so sure that what he had made was good--an inventor has always, my dear,
an irrational love for the thing he has created--and to have it
_spurned_! He was supersensitive, super--everything. Then my own health
went to pieces. I suppose I simply was not getting enough to eat to give
me the strength to meet the mental strain under which I had to live--and
you were coming. From his last visit to Peter Westley he returned with a
little money, but he was as a crushed, broken man--his bitterness had
unbalanced his mind. He said that it was for my health that he came away
with me, but I knew that it was to get away from the world that he
hated--and to hide his failure! Your Little-Dad took us in. He knew at
once that your father was a very sick man and he brought him to his
cabin here on Kettle. But even here your father suffered, and after you
were born he feared for you. He was obsessed with the thought that _you_
had all life to face----"

"How dreadfully sorry you must have felt for him," whispered Jerry,
shyly, trying to make it all seem true.

"I felt sorry for him, child, not that he had been so disappointed but
because he had not the strength to rally from it. I don't believe God
made him that way; I think he sacrificed too much of himself to his
genius. This world we live in demands so much of us--such _different_
things, that, if we are to meet everything squarely, we cannot develop
one side of our minds and let the other side go. I am telling you all
this, Jerry, that you may understand how I have felt--about you. The
months after your father died were sort of a blank to me--I lived on
here because I had nowhere else to go. Gradually my gratitude to John
Travis turned to real affection--not like what I had given your father,
but something quite as deep. And the years I have lived with him here
have been very happy--as though my poor little ship had found the still
waters of an inland stream after having been tossed on a stormy sea. And
I've tried to make myself think that in these still waters I could keep
_you_ always, that you would grow up here and--perhaps--marry
someone----" she laughed. "Mot