After a moment of horrible silence, David spoke:-- "Ah, father! How can I ever tell you!" "How can you ever tell me?" The rising anger mingled with distrust and fear in those words! How many a father knows! "Oh, what is it!" cried his mother, wringing her hands, and bursting into tears. She rose and went to her seat under the mantelpiece. "What have you done?" said his father, also rising and going back to his seat. There was a new sternness in his voice; but the look which returned suddenly to his eyes was the old life-long look. The lad sat watching his father, dazed by the tragedy he was facing. "It is my duty to tell you as soon as possible--I suppose I ought to tell you now." "Then speak--why do you sit there--" The words choked him. "Oh! oh!--" "Mother, don't!--" "What is it?" "Father, I have been put out of college and expelled from the church." How loud sounded the minute noises of the fire--the clocks--the blows of an axe at the woodpile--the lowing of a cow at the barn. "FOR WHAT?" The question was put at length in a voice flat and dead. It summed up a lifetime of failure and admitted it. After an interval it was put again:-- "FOR WHAT?" "I do not believe the Bible any longer. I do not believe in Christianity." "Oh, don't do THAT!" The cry proceeded from David's mother, who crossed quickly and sat beside her husband, holding his hand, perhaps not knowing her own motive. This, then, was the end of hope and pride, the reward of years of self-denial, the insult to all this poverty. For the time, even the awful nature of his avowal made no impression. After a long silence, the father asked feebly:-- "WHY HAVE YOU COME BACK HERE?" Suddenly he rose, and striding across to his son, struck him one blow with his mind:-- "OH, I ALWAYS KNEW THERE WAS NOTHING IN YOU!" It was a kick of the foot. X More than two months had passed. Twilight of closing February was falling over the frozen fields. The last crow had flapped low and straight toward the black wood beyond the southern horizon. No sunset radiance streamed across the wide land, for all day a solitude of cloud had stretched around the earth, bringing on the darkness now before its time.