or that any advice would be given if asked for; of any practical notion of a Heavenly Father, or a Divine education—­Tom was as ignorant as thousands of respectable people who go to church every Sunday, and read good books, and believe firmly that the Pope is Antichrist.  He ought to have learnt it, no doubt; for his father was a religious man:  but he had not learnt it—­any more than thousands learn it, who have likewise religious parents.  He had been taught, of course, the common doctrines and duties of religion; but early remembrances had been rubbed out, as off a schoolboy’s slate, by the mere current of new thoughts and objects, in his continual wanderings.  Disappointments he had had, and dangers in plenty; but only such as rouse a brave and cheerful spirit to bolder self-reliance and invention; not those deep sorrows of the heart which leave a man helpless in the lowest pit, crying for help from without, for there is none within.  He had seen men of all creeds, and had found in all alike (so he held) the many rogues, and the few honest men.  All religions were, in his eyes, equally true and equally false.  Superior morality was owing principally to the influences of race and climate; and devotional experiences (to judge, at least, from American camp-meetings and popish-cities) the results of a diseased nervous system.

Upon a man so hard and strong this fearful blow had fallen, and, to do him justice, he took it like a man.  He wandered on and on for an hour or more, up the hills, and into the forest, talking to himself.

“Poor old Willy!  I should have liked to have looked into his honest face before he went, if only to make sure that we were good friends.  I used to plague him sadly with my tricks.  But what is the use of wishing for what cannot be?  I recollect I had just the same feeling when John died; and yet I got over it after a time, and was as cheerful as if he were alive again, or had never lived at all.  And so I shall get over this.  Why should I give way to what I know will pass, and is meant to pass?  It is my father I feel for.  But I couldn’t be there; and it is no fault of mine that I was not there.  No one told me what was going to happen; and no one could know:  so again,—­why grieve over what can’t be helped?”

And then, to give the lie to all his cool arguments, he sat down among the fern, and burst into a violent fit of crying.  “Oh, my poor dear old daddy!”

Yes; beneath all the hard crust of years, that fountain of life still lay pure as when it came down from heaven—­love for his father.

“Come, come, this won’t do; this is not the way to take stock of my goods, either mental or worldly.  I can’t cry the dear old man out of this scrape.”