pastor in time had come to regard this prospective book of his as a
substantial asset, which could be realized without trouble whenever he
got around to it.

He had not, it is true, gone to the length of seriously considering what
should be the subject of his book. That had not seemed to him to matter
much, so long as it was scriptural. Familiarity with the process of
extracting a fixed amount of spiritual and intellectual meat from any
casual text, week after week, had given him an idea that any one of
many subjects would do, when the time came for him to make a choice.
He realized now that the time for a selection had arrived, and almost
simultaneously found himself with a ready-made decision in his mind. The
book should be about Abraham!

Theron Ware was extremely interested in the mechanism of his own brain,
and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more
remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of
his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and
behold! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, had the answer
waiting for him! When he had gone a little further, and the powerful
range of possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry of his
father, the image-maker, in the exodus from the unholy city of Ur, and
in the influence of the new nomadic life upon the little deistic family
group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he felt that the hand of
Providence was plainly discernible in the matter. The book was to be
blessed from its very inception.

Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the sidewalk and his mind
all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work, and impatience to
be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men and boys who occupied the