"Have you anything that he can take hot?"
Grandfather rose and opened a cupboard door, his hands trembling.
"Make it then, or let your acolyte make it." In the midst of his rage Levis was pleased with having found exactly the right word.
"It's very bitter tea," said the old man as he poured hot water upon the dried leaves.
"The bitterer the better," said Levis grimly.
When Matthew appeared from the inner room, there came into his father's white face the expression of amazed and intolerable pain which Ellen had once seen. Matthew was unshaven; the dark shade on his cheek was not put there by the soil of travel, it was a curling beard, which, above Amos's black suit, had a significance not to be ignored. For a single second his father thought that this could not be Matthew, it was Amos. He laid his hand against his side as though his heart ached sensibly.
"Then I think we'd better settle this matter at once. Since you've chosen to come here and to pass your father's gate, we'll discuss it here and for the last time. Why did you leave school?"
"Do you expect to be a physician without going to school?"
"I don't want to be a physician. I have no interest in it. I want to farm." Matthew burst into tears.
Levis met tears without a change of expression.
"Suppose you do want to farm, there's no reason why you shouldn't go to school. There are new methods of farming which you could learn. You could at least learn how to live. Do you want to remain an ignoramus?"
"I'm not an ignoramus. And I don't want to take your money."
"Because I'm going to be a Seventh-Day Baptist. I'm under conviction. It wouldn't make any difference how long I went to school, the result would be the same. I can't have peace unless I come out openly."
Now it was the heart of Grandfather which threatened to stop beating. Did God hear the prayers of the faithful, or did He not? He poured into a cup some of the steaming brew.
Levis folded his arms and settled himself more closely against the back of the straight pine chair.
"Drink your tea," he commanded. "Then I have something to say to you."
Matthew swallowed the scalding fluid. It warmed him, put heart in him, like a sacramental wine. The storm was almost over; the roar in the chimney had ceased, the roar outside had almost died down; it seemed as though the stage were set for Levis.