, and how the mother
had pleaded that he might go to school and to college, and how sternly
he said, 'No, I want him in my business;' and he remembered how he kept
him slaving at his uncongenial tasks, how he scolded because he still
pored over his books, until at last the mother had laid the poor boy in
the grave before he had attained to manhood. He remembered how the
mother grew paler day by day--she who had been such a help-meet in all
his selfish schemes of hoarding and saving; how she had talked more and
more about her 'dear lost boy,' till he, Moses Grant, commanded her
never to utter that name again in his presence; how the mother still
faded and faded, till at last she too, was laid in a quiet grave beside
her boy. All this came into the mind of Moses Grant. And then he
remembered how he had taken a poor widow's cottage, because his
mortgage-deed gave him the privilege--he never thought the _right_--to
take it; he remembered her sad face, that told of silent suffering, when
she moved with her children from the cottage her husband had built.
'How,' he asked, in the silence of his own mind, 'oh! how could they say
my reputation was unspotted?' Yet he had transgressed no outward law,
had forged no mortgage-deed. He only acted like a man who thought that
this world could only be enjoyed when he possessed a title-deed to it
all; like one who thought that above and beyond this world there was
nothing.

All this time has the Presence stood before Moses Grant, looking into
his troubled face with its piercing eyes, and reading his every thought.

'Answer me now,' it said, 'have you yet begun to live?'

Then there was another and greater struggle in the mind of Moses. Pride
said to him: 'Send this intrusive visitor away, or flee yourself.' But
still the visitor stood there, waiting so calmly, and again Moses
realized that the great world had faded from his vision; so he could
neither send away the intruder, nor fly himself. Still those calm eyes
looked into his inmost soul.

'Oh!' he cried at last, 'you have searched me through and through. No, I
have not lived--I have not been born, I have no life for you to record
in your book. Now, pray leave me--leave me in peace!'

'That were impossible,' said the Presence, 'you know not peace. You
pride yourself on your possessions; but how can you have life or
possessions, if they are not recorded in my book? The earth, that you
love so well, has faded away. It will return to