certainly was, but the rough, exposed grain of his unhewn nature showed
many strata of strength and virility. In this gentle mood a tenderness had
come into view that drew her to him with a touch of kinship.

"Thirty years," he answered musingly, -- "thirty years. It is a long time,
Ruth; but every year when I light the taper it seems as if but yesterday I
was a boy crying because my mother had gone away forever." The strong man
wiped his eyes.

"The little light casts a long ray," observed Ruth. "Love builds its own
lighthouse, and by its gleaming we travel back as at a leap to that which
seemed eternally lost."

Jo Lewis sighed. Presently the thoughts that so strongly possessed him
found an outlet.

"There was a woman for you!" he cried with glowing eyes. "Why, Arnold, you
talk of men being great financiers; I wonder what you would have said to
the powers my mother showed. We were poor, but poor to a degree of which
you can know nothing. Well, with a large family of small children she
struggled on alone and managed to keep us not only alive, but clean and
respectable. In our village Sara Lewis was a name that every man and woman
honored as if it belonged to a princess. Jennie is a good woman, but life
is made easy for her. I often think how grand my mother would feel if she
were here, and I were able to give her every comfort. God knows how proud
and happy I would have been to say, 'You have struggled enough, Mother;
life is going to be a heaven on earth to you now.' Well, well, what is the
good of thinking of it? To-morrow I shall go down town and deal with men,
not memories; it is more profitable."