“No doubt. One’s character centres in the soul, or the appetites. Mine is in the soul, yours in the appetites. I see you to-day as you really are, and I loathe you with an unspeakable loathing. You have opened my eyes with this beautiful little book of Nature. I thank you. Your scientist has convinced me that there are possibly a hundred men in the world who would affect me as you do, were we to meet. And when I looked back into the sweet face of my dead boy, I learned another truth, that in the union of my first great love I was bound in marriage, not simply by a social convention, or a state contract, but for life by Nature’s eternal law. The period of infancy of one child extends over twenty-one years, covering the whole maternal life of the woman who marries at the proper age of twenty-four. This union of one man and one woman never seemed so sacred to me as now. It is Nature’s law, it is God’s law.” McLeod’s anger was fast rising. “Don’t fool yourself,” he sneered, “You may overwork your maternal intuitions. You remember the kiss you gave me when a boy just fifteen? Well, you fooled yourself then about its maternal quality. The magnet of my red head drew your coal black one down to it with irresistible power.” “Perhaps so, Allan. Your work is done. There is the door. I say a last good-bye, with pity for your shallow nature, and the bitter revelation you have given me of your worthlessness.” Without another word he left, but with a dark resolution of slander with which he would tarnish her name, and wring the Preacher’s heart with anguish. CHAPTER XXI--WHY THE PREACHER THREW HIS LIFE AWAY WHILE Mrs. Worth and Sallie were still in the North, the Rev. John Durham received a unanimous call to the pastorate of one of the most powerful Baptist churches in Boston, with a salary of five thousand dollars a year. He was receiving a salary of nine hundred dollars at Hambright, which could boast at most a population of two thousand. He declined the call by return mail. The committee were thunderstruck at this quick adverse decision, refused to consider it final, and wrote him a long urgent letter of protest against such ill-considered treatment. They urged that he must come to Boston, and preach one Sunday, at least, in answer to their generous offer, before rendering a final decision. He consented to do so, and went to Boston. He sought Sallie the day after his arrival. “Ah, my beautiful daughter of the South, it’s good to see you shining here in the midst of the splendours of the Hub, the fairest of them all!” he said shaking her hand feelingly. “You mean pining, not shining,” she protested. “That’s better still. I knew your heart was in the right place!” “How is he, Doctor?” she asked. “He’s trying to pull himself together with his work, and succeeding. The shock of a great sorrow has steadied his nerves, broadened his sympathies, and it will make him a man.”