“O, but Willis, be careful.”  Her voice was low and full of feeling.  “You can do all that, my boy, and more.  I know you miss him, but you must not forget we had him once, both of us, and that he was the very best father in all the world.”  She stopped, for now the tears were coming fast.  “The only trouble is that he was taken away before you were lad enough to know him and love him as you would if we had him now.  But that is all the more reason why you should grow into a worthy man, my boy—­for his sake and mine.  He loved you dearly, and I’ve often thought it was that love and ambition for you that made him determine to make money, so that you might have the future he planned for you.  He left you, my boy, something better than money—­a heritage of clean, noble blood and character.  You aren’t old enough just yet to know all that that means, but some day you will be truly thankful.”

“You are right—­always right; but you know what I mean, don’t you?  You have never told me all about him, have you, mother?  Won’t you tell me now?  I never wanted to know so badly as I do tonight.  He seems to come near to me sometimes, even if I can’t see him, and I want to know more about him.”

The fire burned low; the storm had increased in its fury; it seemed as if each gust would lift the house from its foundations.  Still, to these two, opening their hearts to each other in the kindly glow of the firelight, the storm was forgotten.

After a pause she began softly and very slowly to tell the story.

“Your father was a noble man, Willis, such as I am sure you will be if you are spared to live.  His boyhood I do not know much about, only that it was spent on his father’s farm.  He went to Kalamazoo for his schooling, and it was there that I first met him.  He worked hard, saved his money, and went to Ann Arbor for his college work.  He was ambitious to become a great engineer, and was always tinkering at some kind of a machine.  He used to joke with me about becoming a great inventor, and after we were married he did try his hand at a patent coupler and a back-firing device for a gas engine.  He was just like you, my boy, always dreaming and seeing things in the out-of-doors.  I can remember the delight he found in rising early on summer mornings to search for caterpillars, moths, and worms in the nearby woods, and he would put a strange bug in every bottle I had in the house.

“After our marriage we moved to Lansing, and he became superintendent in an electrical manufacturing company.  He had a little shop of his own in the basement at home, and during the long winter evenings of the first year that we were there he built furniture for our little home.  The chair we are sitting in, Willis, is one of his first pieces.  We were very happy together there, and it wasn’t long before you came.  The summer before you were born his company sent him West to install mine machinery.  It was then that he became interested in the great