"Do you think there is anything atheistical in evolution?" his mother asked, and with some solicitude in her large eyes, for, like all trained in the old beliefs, she felt that the new philosophies led away into a realm of vague negations. Webb understood her anxiety lest the faith she had taught him should become unsettled, and he reassured her in a characteristic way.
"No, mother," he said. "If evolution is the true explanation of the world, as it now appears to us, it is no more atheistical than some theologies I have heard preached, which contained plenty of doctrines and attributes, but no God. If God with his infinite leisure chooses to evolve his universe, why shouldn't he? In any case a creative, intelligent power is equally essential. It would be just as easy for me to believe that all the watches and jewelry at Tiffany's were the result of fortuitous causes as to believe that the world as we find it has no mind back of it."
Mother smiled with satisfaction, for she saw that he still stood just where she did, only his horizon had widened.
"Well," said his father, contentedly, "I read much in the papers and magazines of theories and isms of which I never heard when I was young, but eighty years of experience have convinced me that the Lord reigns."
They all laughed at this customary settlement of knotty problems, on the part of the old gentleman, and Burt, rising from the table, looked out, with the remark that the prospects were that "the Lord would rain heavily that afternoon." The oldest and most infallible weather-prophet in the region—Storm King—was certainly giving portentous indications of a storm of no ordinary dimensions. The vapor was pouring over its summit in Niagara-like volume, and the wind, no longer rushing with its recent boisterous roar, was moaning and sighing as if nature was in pain and trouble. The barometer, which had been low for two days, sank lower; the temperature rose as the gale veered to the eastward. This fact, and the moisture laden atmosphere, indicated that it came from the Gulf Stream region of the Atlantic. The rain, which began with a fine drizzle, increased fast, and soon fell in blinding sheets. The day grew dusky early, and the twilight was brief and obscure; then followed a long night of Egyptian darkness, through which the storm rushed, warred, and splashed with increasing vehemence. Before the evening was over, the sound of tumultuously flowing water became an appreciable element in the uproar without, and Webb, opening a window on the sheltered side of the house, called Amy to hear the torrents pouring down the sides of Storm King.
"What tremendous alternations of mood Nature indulges in!" she said, as she came shivering back to the fire. "Contrast such a night with a sunny June day."
"It would seem as if 'mild, ethereal spring' had got her back up," Burt remarked, "and regarding the return of winter as a trespass, had taken him by the throat, determined to have it out once for all. Something will give way before morning, probably half our bridges."
"Well, that is a way of explaining the jar among the elements that I had not thought of," she said, laughing.
"You needn't think Webb can do all the explaining. I have my theories also—sounder than his, too, most of 'em."
"There is surely no lack of sound accompanying your theory to-night.
Indeed, it is not all 'sound and fury!'"