THE REDEMPTION OF DAVID CORSON by CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS The Bowen-Merrill Company 1900 _To my friend William Harvey Anderson_ Contents I. This Other Eden II. And Satan Came Also III. The Egyptians IV. The Woman V. The Light That Lies VI. The Trail of the Serpent VII. The Chance Word VIII. A Broken Reed IX. Where Paths Converge X. A Poisoned Spring XI. The Flesh and the Devil XII. The Moth and the Flame XIII. Found Wanting XIV. Turned Tempter XV. The Snare of the Fowler XVI. The Derelicts XVII. The Shadow of Death XVIII. A Fugitive and a Vagabond XIX. Alienation XX. The Inevitable Hour XXI. A Signal in the Night XXII. Heart Hunger XXIII. Where I Might Find Him XXIV. Safe Haven XXV. The Little Lad XXVI. Out of the Shadow XXVII. If Thine Enemy Hunger XXVIII. A Man Crossed With Adversity XXIX. As a Tale That is Told XXX. Out of the Jaws of Death XXXI. The Great Refusal XXXII. The End of Exile XXXIII. A Self-imposed Expiation XXXIV. Fasting in the Wilderness XXXV. A Forest Idyl XXXVI. The Supreme Test XXXVII. Paradise Regained CHAPTER I. THIS OTHER EDEN "This other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature." --Richard II. Hidden away in this worn and care-encumbered world, scarred with its frequent traces of a primeval curse, are spots so quiet and beautiful as to make the fall of man seem incredible, and awaken in the breast of the weary traveler who comes suddenly upon them, a vague and dear delusion that he has stumbled into Paradise. Such an Eden existed in the extreme western part of Ohio in the spring of eighteen hundred and forty-nine. It was a valley surrounded by wooded hills and threaded by a noisy brook which hastily made its way, as if upon some errand of immense importance, down to the big Miami not many miles distant. A road cut through a vast and solemn forest led into the valley, and entering as if by a corridor and through the open portal of a temple, the traveler saw a white farm-house nestling beneath a mighty hackberry tree whose wide-reaching arms sheltered it from summer sun and winter wind. A deep, wide lawn of bluegrass lay in front, and a garden of flowers, fragrant and brilliant, on its southern side. Stretching away into the background was the farm newly carved out of the wilderness, but already in a high state of cultivation. All those influences which stir the deepest emotion of the heart were silently operating here--quiet, order, beauty, power, life. It affected one to enter it unprepared in much the same way, only with a greater variety and richness of emotion, as to push through dense brush and suddenly behold a mountain lake upon whose bosom there is not so much as a ripple, and in whose silver mirror surrounding forests, flying water-fowl and the bright disk of the sun are perfectly reflected.