This is no great sum nor did any of his creditors press him unduly for payment. His bills were small and scattered. He tried to pay them, but in spite of 'Thusia's greatest efforts each salary period saw an unpaid balance seldom smaller, and sometimes slightly greater, than the original debt. This debt worried David and 'Thusia far more than it worried his creditors--who worried not at all--but before long it seemed to become, as such things do, a part of life. David's bills, paid at one end and increased at the other, were never over three months in arrears. In Riverbank at that day this was considered unusually prompt pay. Accounts were usually rendered once a year. But the debt was always there. The year her boy was three Mary Derling divorced her husband. For some time one of Derling's flirtations had been more serious than Mary had imagined. When she heard the truth she talked the matter over calmly with her father and her husband. All three were of one mind. Derling's father had consistently refused to give the son money and Sam Wiggett had again and again put his hand in his pocket to make good sums lost by Derling in ill-considered business ventures. The truth was that Derling's flirtations were costing too much, and he spent more than he could afford. Wiggett, to be rid of this constant drain, gave Derling a good lump sum and Mary kept the child. The divorce was granted quietly, no one knowing anything about it until it was all over. There was no scandal whatever. Derling went back to Derlingport and was soon forgotten, and Mary resumed her maiden name. More than ever, now, she took part in David's work, and her purse was always at his service for his works of charity. David, Rose Hinch and Mary were a triumvirate working together for the good. At thirty-seven Dominie Dean was as fully a man as he ever would be. He was fated to cling always to his boyish optimism; never to age into a heavily authoritative head of a flock, with a smooth paunch over which to pass a plump hand as if blessing a satisfactory digestive apparatus. To the last day of his life he remained youthfully slender, and his clear gray eyes and curly hair, even when the latter turned gray, suggested something boyish. It is inevitable that fifteen years of ministry shall either make or mar the man inside the minister. David Dean had ripened without drying into a hack of church routine. At thirty he had, without being aware of the fact, entered a new period of his ministry, and at thirty-seven, like a pilot who knows his ship, he was no longer prone to excitement over small difficulties. If he was no longer a flash of fire, he was a steadier flame.