"Religion, my dear?" answered her uncle, greatly startled at so
unusual a question. "What sort of religion?"

"The kind of religion that father preached about every Sunday--the
Christian religion."

"To tell you the truth, my dear," he answered confidentially, "I've
never had much time to think about it. With some men, you see, it's
part of their lives, and with others--well, it isn't. My lines never
ran that way."

"Was father very religious when he was young?"

"No, I can't say that he was. But then we never got on, your father
and I. Our lines didn't run together at all. But I shouldn't have
called him a religious man."

"Then all this time father has been lying?"

Her uncle gazed at her apprehensively. He did not wish to undermine
her faith in her father on the very day after his death, but he was
so ignorant about her, her thoughts and beliefs and desires, that he
did not know what her idea of her father had been. His idea of him
had always been that he was a dirty, miserly scoundrel, but that was
not quite the thing for a daughter to feel, and there was an
innocence and simplicity about Maggie that perplexed him.

"I can't truly say that I ever knew what your father's private
feelings were. He never cared for me enough to tell me. He may have