daughter's husband Jacob and son Stephen, sat down to a simple but
bountiful supper, during which and late into the evening the young
mystic pondered the vision which he believed himself to have seen, and
the message which he believed himself to have heard. In his musings
there was not a tremor or a doubt; he would have as soon questioned the
reality of the old farm-house and the faces of the family gathered about
the table. Of the susceptibility of the nerves to morbid activity, or
the powers of the overdriven brain to objectify its concepts, he had
never even dreamed. He was a credulous and unsophisticated youth,
dwelling in a realm of imagination rather than in a world of reality and
law. He had much to learn. His education was about to begin, and to
begin as does all true and effective education, in a spiritual
temptation. The Ghebers say that when their great prophet Ahriman was
thrown into the fire by the order of Nimrod, the flames into which he
fell turned into a bed of roses, upon which he peacefully reclined. This
innocent Quaker youth had been reclining upon a bed of roses which now
began to turn into a couch of flames.




CHAPTER II.

AND SATAN CAME ALSO

"It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all."

--Tennyson.