kept them for the old felt hat when Father was out about the farm. And
then when the news came that Stephen had graduated so soon, gone up
higher to God's eternal university to live and work among the great,
even then her soul had been big enough to see the glory of it behind the
sorrow, and say with trembling, conquering lips: "I shall go to him, but
he shall not return to me. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord!"

That was the kind of nerve that blessed little Mother Marshall was built
with, and it was only in such times as these, when Father had gone to
town and stayed a little later than usual, that the tears in her heart
got the better of her and she laid her face against the old felt hat.

Down the road in the gloom moved a dark speck. It couldn't be Father,
for he had gone in the machine--the nice, comfortable little car that
Stephen had made them get before he went away to college, because he
said that Father needed to have things easier now. Father would be in
the machine, and by this time the lights would be lit. Father was very
careful always about lighting up when it grew dusk. He had a great
horror of accidents to other people. Not that he was afraid for himself,
no indeed. Father was a _man_! The kind of a man to be the father of a
Stephen!

The speck grew larger. It made a chugging noise. It was one of those
horrible motor-cycles. Mother Marshall hated them, though she had never
revealed the fact. Stephen had wanted one, had said he intended to get
one with the first money he earned after he came out of college, but she
had hoped in her heart they would go out of fashion by that time and
there would be something less fiendish-looking to take their place. They
always looked to her as if they were headed straight for destruction,