e the wall itself to be rotten wood too. We find it is solid and
standing only when we fall headlong against it. We have been taught that
all right and wrong originate in the will of an irresponsible being.
It is some time before we see how the inexorable 'Thou shalt and shalt
not,' are carved into the nature of things. This is the time of danger."

His dark, misty eyes looked into the boy's.

"In the end experience will inevitably teach us that the laws for a wise
and noble life have a foundation infinitely deeper than the fiat of any
being, God or man, even in the groundwork of human nature.

"She will teach us that whoso sheddeth man's blood, though by man his
blood be not shed, though no man avenge and no hell await, yet every
drop shall blister on his soul and eat in the name of the dead. She will
teach that whoso takes a love not lawfully his own, gathers a flower
with a poison on its petals; that whoso revenges, strikes with a sword
that has two edges--one for his adversary, one for himself; that who
lives to himself is dead, though the ground is not yet on him; that who
wrongs another clouds his own sun; and that who sins in secret
stands accursed and condemned before the one Judge who deals eternal
justice--his own all-knowing self.

"Experience will teach us this, and reason will show us why it must be
so; but at first the world swings before our eyes, and no voice cries
out, 'This is the way, walk ye in it!' You are happy to be here, boy!
When the suspense fills you with pain you build stone walls and dig
earth for relief. Others have stood where you stand today, and have felt
as you feel; and another relief has been offered them, and they have
taken it.

"When the day has come when they have seen the path in which they might
walk, they have not the strength to follow it. Habits have fastened on
them from which nothing but death can free them; which cling closer than
his sacerdotal sanctimony to a priest; which feed on the intellect
like a worm, sapping energy, hope, creative power, all that makes a man
higher than a beast--leaving only the power to yearn, to regret, and to
sink lower in the abyss.

"Boy," he said, and the listener was not more unsmiling now than the
speaker, "you are happy to be here! Stay where you are. If you ever
pray, let it be only the one old prayer--'Lead us not into temptation.'
Live on here quietly. The time may yet come when you will be that which
other men have hoped to be a