"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible. But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, _up_ and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, _up_ along the misty pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath of angels!" Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon--had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should never have done. Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his father"--which was an invidious circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet. And he had most weakly continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter--the godless boy whom he had driven from his door. Not even the other bit of news that came a little later had sufficed to make him repair his injustice; and this, though the report came by the Reverend Arthur Pelham Gridley, incumbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at Edom, who could preach sermons the old man liked. Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of the brethren at Denver, had brought this news: That Bernal Linford had been last seen walking south from Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a poor half-witted creature who had aroused some local excitement by declaring himself to be the son of God, speaking familiarly of the Deity as "Father."