During the long hours in which Grandfather waited for Amos, he reviewed his life, searching like Job to find where he had erred and how he had brought upon himself the heavy punishments of his old age. He had tried to do his duty, had preached righteousness, had tried to interpret the Bible correctly, had given to the poor. He had married, but the instinct to mate had been implanted in the human heart by God Himself. Except in this one act, his whole life had been one of self-denial.

In spite of his effort to be righteous, his life had followed a descending scale since his thirtieth year. Then his wife had died, and about the same time three families had left the church, two to become Lutherans, the other to go to church no more. They had all been rich in this world's goods, and what was far more important, they had been large families.

Afterwards Mary had married Edward Levis and the danger to her soul had occupied his anxious heart. He had recovered presently his sense of security and had built great hopes upon Matthew and Amos and Ellen; but here again he had been cruelly disappointed—Ellen had left him and Matthew had behaved shamefully. Last week Millie had come angrily complaining that Matthew was bewitched; he would not go to church, he was teaching the children to despise her, and he had taken to reading books which he had once considered wicked.

"He tells little Matthew that things I say are wrong. My way was him good enough when we were married. It is that Ellen!"

And now Amos had gone, and the souls of all three were in peril; they were sheep lost upon the mountain.

If it had not been for the discovery of these unclean volumes, Grandfather would have had a search instituted at once for his nephew. But to him they explained everything. He felt a destroying rage with Amos; he could look upon him with far less leniency than upon Matthew and Ellen. It was in his case as though a dog which for years pretended gentleness had turned and rent the hand that fed it. He had practiced a long piece of deceit; some of these books he must have had for months. Grandfather pondered upon his comings and goings and decided correctly upon the exact day on which he had made his first excursion in search of literature. With fresh suspicion he took from the table drawer "The Mystic Dove" and Amos's translation and discovered that work had ceased months ago. He looked with tears at the marginal scribblings.

"I trusted him too much," he said bitterly.

He sat waiting all the rainy afternoon and evening.

But Amos did not come. Night fell after a gloomy twilight and Grandfather went exhausted to bed. He locked the door with a stern pressing together of his thin lips, but after a while he rose and unlocked it. He even opened it and, shivering, looked out into the black landscape. But no human being was to be seen and only the mocking blast of an automobile horn from the curve near by was to be heard.

Another day passed and Amos did not come. On the third day Grandfather saw the rural carrier drop a letter into his box and hurried feebly to the road. He opened it as he returned through the graveyard, but found that he could not read. He was frightened until he remembered that he did not have his spectacles.

But even spectacles did not make reading possible at once. He stared at the sheet for a long time before he understood exactly what Amos meant.

"Dear Uncle, you will be surprised to hear that I am going to give up my school. I have written to the directors. There are plenty others who will be glad to have the place. Uncle, I have found peace. For a long time I have been uneasy in a spiritual way. But I have found a friend and he says that what I need is to work hard and the soul will take care of itself. I work in the furnace and in the evening I am with him. He is a Salvation Army worker. There are three men and two women who work together. One man and one woman are married, the rest are single people. It is like the idea of the Kloster in a way. I hope you were not anxious. I had a heavy burden on me, Uncle."

When he at last understood, Grandfather was violently excited, not by anger or by disappointment, but by hope. If Amos had found peace, so much the better. But he need not stay away—this was the place for him to labor; let him bring his friends here! Grandfather penned a forgiving, welcoming response.

But Amos was not to be persuaded. He answered saying that he was glad he was forgiven, but a life of meditation and prayer suited none of them; they must be up and doing, the harvest was white. "It is our custom to go where sin is," explained Amos. "We do not wait for sinners to come to us."

"'We'!" repeated Grandfather.

The word had for Amos a specific meaning.

"There is a young woman here, Corporal Sally, who is a noble woman. She has had a sad history, but has come through." Little did Grandfather dream the struggling against sin, represented by a worldly Ellen, behind these simple sentences!

Then, alas for both writer and reader, Amos explained that he could no longer believe in the keeping of the Seventh Day, the ceremony of Foot-washing, the exchange of the holy kiss. He did not hold them to be the essentials of religion.

He said in conclusion that if Grandfather needed him, if he should be sick, for instance, he could come at once. He signed himself Grandfather's "in the Lord."

"In the Lord!" Grandfather lifted his stout old stick and brought it down heavily. It struck "Esther Waters" and Esther fell to the floor. "The Raft" was torn across one of its grimmest pages, "Madame Bovary" was cruelly slashed.

Then a wilder mood came upon him. The end of the Kloster was decreed, that was clear. The props were removed, the pillars loosened, the foundations weakened. When he was gone no one would be left to cherish the old buildings. Curiosity-seekers, long the bane of his existence, would carry away the treasures of books and curios, the wooden blocks upon which saintly heads had rested, the elaborate charts penned by devoted fingers. An insistent antiquarian often visited Grandfather—he would come and take that which he coveted and perhaps sell his loot, making capital of the things of the saints! There was no rational explanation of earthly affairs; reward was not given to merit, nor peace of mind to those who deserved it. It would be well to make an end.

His anger quickened. The Kloster was his; even in human law he might claim it, might sell it, do as he liked with it, as the last Seventh-Day Baptist. After him there would be no one who had any real claim upon it.

Suddenly he had a vision. He saw clean, merciful, leaping flames doing quickly what time would do gradually. The suggestion seemed to come miraculously and with it a plan for its carrying-out. There was an angle where the Saal and Saron joined, where a pile of kindling could be laid. He felt an overwhelming weariness with life and an eager desire to be rid of it. He began to plan cunningly.

In the night he took from his woodbox an armful of fine kindling and carried it up the stone steps and round the meeting-house to the spot which he had selected. The night was cloudy and there was not a sound, not even the distant baying of a dog or the echo of footsteps. He returned and secured two matches, the small can from which he filled his brass lamp, and also the ponderous key. He would look for the last time upon the treasures which he loved. He opened the door of the meeting-room in the Saal. The old benches, the table with its superimposed reading-stand which formed the pulpit, the faded charts on the wall—he saw them clearly, though their outlines were almost invisible. He repeated to himself the inscription on one of the charts, then he stood trembling and sighing.

He walked through the meeting-room to the kitchen where of old meals had been prepared for visiting brethren and their families who came to spend days in worship—he groaned as he thought of their multitude, a far greater multitude in his dreams than they had been in reality.

The interior of Saron was black, but he needed no light. He touched lovingly an ancient chair, an old loom, a row of pewter spoons, a hand-woven basket. He climbed last of all to the matin room. Now he was breathing heavily. The thought of Amos had returned, filling him with rage. Matthew and Ellen were children, his children, but Amos was not. He hoped that the forthcoming tragedy would haunt Amos all his days. He meant to come back to this room and await his end.

He went trembling down the steep steps and out to the angle of the wall where he had laid the little woodpile. He struck a match and its light showed faintly. He had selected the spot cunningly; it was invisible from all points except a field, and in this field, sown with winter wheat, there was certain to be no observer. The fire would not be discovered until the flames leaped through the roof and the opposite wall. When he tried to light the wood it did not burn, and he remembered his coal-oil and lifted the can.

But before he had tilted it Grandfather paused. He had given the hours of a long life, not to dreams of arson and self-destruction, but to meditations upon the majesty and the goodness of God. His visit to the matin room had started a familiar train of thought. He ceased suddenly to hear the crackling of flames and the thunder of falling beams and rafters and thick old walls; he heard the sweet and heavenly singing of women far above his head, the ethereal sounds issuing from fasting bodies. He forgot his rage, he forgot Ellen and Matthew and Amos, he forgot himself. His wrongs ceased to be real; the realities were white-robed choirs, a heavenly peace of mind. He stood listening.

After a long time he carried the oil can and the wood back to the cottage and put them in their places. Then he opened the window and sat down. It was almost midnight, the hour when Father Friedsam had been accustomed to waken his spiritual children so that they might worship their Creator. With folded hands and monkish mien Grandfather rose and stepped out of his cottage and up the stone steps to the meeting-house and there ascended the pulpit platform. The room which he saw was not this dim, low-ceiled room of his ministry; it was a loftier room with a latticed gallery for singers. He saw before him an entering procession, and alone in the darkness he lifted his voice and praised God with a psalm.