CHAPTER II.
AN OLD MAN FACES TWO WAYS His candle up, he went softly along the white hallway over the heavy red carpet, to where a door at the end, half-open, let him into his study.
Here a wood fire at the stage of glowing coals made a searching warmth.
Blowing out his candle, he seated himself at the table where a shaded lamp cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers.

A big, white-breasted gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug and leaped lightly upon him with great rumbling purrs, nosing its head under one of his hands suggestively, and, when he stroked it, looking up at him with lazily falling eye-lids.
He crossed his knees to make a better lap for the cat, and fell to musing backward into his own boyhood, when the Christmas Saint was a real presence.

Then he came forward to his youth, when he had obeyed the call of the Lord against his father's express command that he follow the family way and become a prosperous manufacturer.

Truly there had been revolt in him.

Perhaps he had never enough considered this in excuse for his own daughter's revolt.
Again he dwelt in the days when he had preached with a hot passion such truth as was his.