ENTY-NINE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE BRENTONS

CHAPTER ONE

However archaic and conventional it may sound, it is the literal fact
that young Scott Brenton was led into the ministry by the prayer of his
widowed mother. Furthermore, the prayer was not made to him, but
offered in secret and in all sincerity at the Throne of Grace.

"Oh, my dearest Lord and Master," she prayed, at her evening devotions
upon her knees and with her work-roughened hands clasped upon the gaudy
patchwork quilt; "guide Thou my son. Bring him to feel that his perfect
happiness can come only from going forth to preach Thy word to all
men."

And, as it chanced, the door of her room had been left slightly open.
Scott Brenton, young and alert and full of enthusiasms which his years
of grinding work and economy had been powerless to down, came leaping
up the steps just then. The front door had been left unlocked for him.
He closed it noiselessly behind him, and then started to run up the
stairs. The murmur of his mother's voice checked him, stayed his step a
moment, and then changed its pace. He went on up the stairs quite
soberly, thoughtful, his face a little overcast.

It was now the middle of the Christmas holidays of his junior year. The
day he had left college for the short vacation, his chemistry professor
had sent for him and had said things to him about his last term's work
and about his examination papers at the end of the term. The things
were courteous as concerned the past; to Scott Brenton's mind, they
were dazzling as concerned the future. The dazzle had endured until his
mother's words had fallen on his ears. Then it had eclipsed itself,
leaving him to wonder whether, after all, it had not been the _ignis
fatuus_ of self-elation, and not the steady glow of truth. Scott
Brenton was not much more given to introspection, at that epoch of his
life, than is any other healthy youngster of nineteen. None the less,
he slept curiously little, that night.

Next morning, while he dressed, he kept his teeth shut cornerwise, a
habit he had when he was making up his mind to any noxious undertaking.
Then he went downstairs, to find his mother smiling contentedly to
herself, while she added the finishing touches to the breakfast. It was
sausage, that morning, Scott Brenton always remembered afterwar