Their eyes met. There was a long pause. Suddenly the sharp, sweet notes of the church bell brought John Douglas to his feet with a start of surprise. “Have you got to go?” Polly asked regretfully. “Yes, I must; but I'll read the rest from the church. Open the window, Mandy!” And he passed out of the door and quickly down the stairs. Chapter VI WHEN John Douglas's uncle offered to educate his nephew for the ministry, the boy was less enthusiastic than his mother. He did not remonstrate, however, for it had been the custom of generations for at least one son of each Douglas family to preach the gospel of Calvinism, and his father's career as an architect and landscape gardener had not left him much capital. Douglas, senior, had been recognised as an artist by the few who understood his talents, but there is small demand for the builder of picturesque houses in the little business towns of the Middle West, and at last he passed away, leaving his son only the burden of his financial failure and an ardent desire to succeed at the profession in which his father had fared so badly. The hopeless, defeated look on the departed man's face had always haunted the boy, who was artist enough to feel his father's genius intuitively, and human enough to resent the injustice of his fate. Douglas's mother had suffered so much because of the impractical efforts of her husband, that she discouraged the early tendencies of the son toward drawing and mathematics and tried to direct his thoughts toward creeds and Bible history. When he went away for his collegiate course, she was less in touch with him; and he was able to steal time from his athletics to devote to his art. He spent his vacations in a neighbouring city before a drawing board in the office of a distinguished architect, his father's friend. Douglas was not a brilliant divinity student, and he was relieved when at last he received his degree in theology and found himself appointed to a small church in the Middle West. His step was very bright the morning he first went up the path that led to his new home. His artistic sense was charmed by the picturesque approach to the church and parsonage. The view toward the tree-encircled spire was unobstructed, for the church had been built on the outskirts of the town to allow for a growth that had not materialised. He threw up his head and gazed at the blue hills, with their background of soft, slow-moving clouds. The smell of the fresh earth, the bursting of the buds, the forming of new life, set him thrilling with a joy that was very near to pain. He stopped half way up the path and considered the advantages of a new front to the narrow-eaved cottage, and when his foot touched the first step of the vine-covered porch, he was far more concerned about a new portico than with any thought of his first sermon.