The old man put down his coffee-cup and the look in his eyes was half-appealing.
"What was it turned you, son?—nothing I've ever said or done, I hope?"
Tom shook his big blond head slowly.
"No, not directly; though I suppose a man does go back to his father for a measuring-stick. But indirectly you, and the other Gordons, are responsible for the best there is in me—and that's the questioning part. Given the doubt, I hunted till I found the man who could resolve or confirm it."
"Who was he?" inquired Caleb, willing to hear more particularly.
"His name is Bauer—the man I've been rooming with. He is a German biologist who was to have been educated for the Lutheran ministry. His people made the capital mistake of sending him to Freiburg for a couple of years as a preliminary, and, when they found out what the German university had done for him, they sent him to Boston, under the impression that the Puritan American city might correct some of his materialism."
Caleb smiled. "That ain't just the way we think of Boston over here," he remarked.
"No; and, of course, Bauer didn't change his point of view. We used to have it up hill and down. I had Scripture—mother and the Beershebans had taught me that—and Bauer had immense reading, flinty Dutch common sense, and a huge lack of the reverence for the so-called sacred subjects which seems to be ingrained in every race but the Teutonic. I fought hard, both for mother's sake and because it was the first time I had ever met a man with his sword out on the other side."
"Well?" said Caleb.
"He downed me, horse, foot and artillery; made me realize as I never had before what an absolute begging of the premises the entire Christian argument is."