nterfere with your
private affairs."

"Thank you," said Harold. "Thank you very much! But there's another
private affair. I want to get away from this life, this town, this
house. It stifles me. You refused last summer when I asked you to let
me go up to Grenfell's Mission on the Labrador. I could go now, at
least as far as the Newfoundland Station. Have you changed your mind?"

"Not at all. I think it is an exceedingly foolish enterprise. It
would interrupt the career that I have marked out for you."

"Well, then, here's a cheaper proposition. Algy Vanderhoof wants me to
join him on his yacht with--well, with a little party--to cruise in the
West Indies. Would you prefer that?"

"Certainly not! The Vanderhoof set is wild and godless--I do not wish
to see you keeping company with fools who walk in the broad and easy
way that leads to perdition."

"It is rather a hard choice," said the young man, with a short laugh,
turning toward the door. "According to you there's very little
difference--a fool's paradise or a fool's hell! Well, it's one or the
other for me, and I'll toss up for it to-night: heads, I lose; tails,
the devil wins. Anyway, I'm sick of this, and I'm out of it."

"Harold," said the older man (and there was a slight tremor in his
voice), "don't let us quarrel on Christmas Eve. All I want is to
persuade you to think seriously of the duties and responsibilities to
which God has called you--don't speak lightly of heaven and
hell--remember, there is another life."

The young man came back and laid his hand upon his father's shoulder.

"Father," he said, "I want to remember it. I try to believe in it.
But somehow or other, in this house, it all seems unreal to me. No
doubt all you say is perfectly right and wise. I don't venture to
argue against it, but I can't feel it--that's all. If I'm to have a
soul, either to lose or to save, I must really live. Just now neither
the present nor the future means anything to me. But surely we won't
quarrel. I'm very grateful to you, and we'll part friends.
Good-night, sir."

The father held out his hand in silence. The heavy portiere dropped
noiselessly behind the son, and he went up the wide, curving stairway
to his own room.

Meantime John Weightman sat in his carved chair in the Jacobean
dining-room. He felt strangely old and dull. The portraits of
beautiful women by Lawrence and Reynolds and Raeburn, which had often
seemed like real c