David laughed softly, and turned his eyes once more to the
distant sky-line.

Why not?" he asked dreamily. "What better place could there be? I
like it, daddy."

The man drew a troubled breath, and stirred restlessly. The
teasing pain in his side was very bad to-night, and no change of
position eased it. He was ill, very ill; and he knew it. Yet he
also knew that, to David, sickness, pain, and death meant
nothing--or, at most, words that had always been lightly, almost
unconsciously passed over. For the first time he wondered if,
after all, his training--some of it--had been wise.

For six years he had had the boy under his exclusive care and
guidance. For six years the boy had eaten the food, worn the
clothing, and studied the books of his father's choosing. For six
years that father had thought, planned, breathed, moved, lived
for his son. There had been no others in the little cabin. There
had been only the occasional trips through the woods to the
little town on the mountain-side for food and clothing, to break
the days of close companionship.

All this the man had planned carefully. He had meant that only
the good and beautiful should have place in David's youth. It was
not that he intended that evil, unhappiness, and death should
lack definition, only definiteness, in the boy's mind. It should
be a case where the good and the beautiful should so fill the
thoughts that there would be no room for anything else. This had