On the way downstairs he peeped into his mother's room, but no one was there, and he went straight on to a small room on the first floor which was a sort of offshoot from the house, and hardly bigger than a good-sized bay window. But the picture he found there Magnus never forgot. The room had been his father's summer study. Too cold for winter use, but in June perfection, with every window open to the air. Roses and honeysuckles climbed up and ran across and strayed in; amid the tangle birds sang and twittered and builded. Further off were cattle and chickens, with an old drum major of a turkey cock strutting before the barnyard throng. The scent of hayfields was mingled with the yet rarer fragrance of new-mown grass. If the room had been larger, the minister's old library would have made small show; but as it was, the strips of wall between the windows were quite well covered. It was a very old affair in every way; leather covers much worn with handling, shutting in truths that were but the brighter for much believing. Very old-fashioned books. You could not find a copy of "Why I am a Doubter"; nor a single treatise on "The Eternal Equilibrium of Things." The glad toiler in Christ's vineyard had had no use for "The Trammels of Faith, and how I Got beyond Them"; and as little for "The Proper Sphere and Limit of the Bible, Set Forth and Defined." But there was Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted," which the minister himself had also preached; with Bunyan's "Holy War between Diabolus and the Town of Mansoul," the which he himself had also waged; there was "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," upon which he now had entered. There was also old Matthew Henry's "Commentary" in its six volumes, which gave people so much to do on the plane of the lower criticism, that they had small chance to wish for the higher; with Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and "Lives of the Port Royalists," and Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." Only two chairs were in the room: one, where inquirers had so often sat and troubled hearts found peace, was pushed back now, its service done; but the minister's chair still stood by the minister's table where lay the minister's Book of books; and in the chair sat the minister's widow. She was not reading at the moment: I think she had been listening to the gay sounds upstairs; and a tender, happy smile was on her lips, in perfect keeping with the words on which her eyes had been. But everything in that room was in keeping, to Magnus: his mother's cap looked to him not a whit purer than her face; nor was the shine outside the windows more gladsome than the look she turned to him. The young cadet was at her side in an instant, down on his knees with his head on her shoulder. "What waked you up so early, child?" "The echo of that reveille gun came clear across the Continent for the express purpose." "Hardly. I heard you whistling some time ago." "Did I disturb you?" "You could not do that," said the mother.