"Well, Matthew?" said Levis, sitting suddenly upright.
Matthew answered without raising his head.
"I'm under conviction. It would be wrong for me to waste my time studying when nothing was to come of it."
Now Grandfather folded his arms across his breast and bent his head almost upon them. Did God hear His children, or did He not?
Levis lifted his hat from the pine table.
Matthew lifted his eyes. For an instant, with torn heart, he longed to throw himself on his father's breast. But his Heavenly Father was more dear. He dropped his eyes once more.
Levis lingered another instant, his back against the door.
"Listen to me. I have my creed. I believe that no man can behave foolishly or wrongly without having it somehow returned to him. I hope that this hour will never be visited upon you."
Then Levis went out to return no more. He stumbled as he crossed the step and then straightened up in the face of the wind which blew clear and strong from the north. He went through the gate into the graveyard, and saw the full moon, unveiled with mysterious suddenness, illuminating the white stones. The experience through which he had passed, the stormy and magnificent night, the moonlight making so purely white the tallest stone in the little graveyard--all would have moved and racked another man. But he had the power, cultivated through long years in uncongenial surroundings, of detaching himself from the present. He began to repeat a passage of description of which he was fond and which brought before his eyes a foreign landscape which he had never seen, but of which he often dreamed. When it was finished he repeated another passage and yet another, and so came at last to his own door.
The light burned dimly, but a dimmer light would have revealed to his seeking eyes that for which they looked. Under a gay pieced afghan lay Ellen, a book in her arms. Beside her her father drew up a chair and there sat down, scrutinizing each childish lineament, each crisp curl. She slept heavily, and it seemed to him that there was a shadow under her eyes and he bent still more closely over her to discover that the shadow was only that cast by her long lashes. He put out his hand and laid it softly on the bright cover.