Professor and the Reverend Jared Claghorn has already intimated that the name Eliphalet was an honored one in the family. An Eliphalet Claghorn had been a man of mark among the Pilgrims. His eldest son had borne his parent's name and had succeeded to the clerical vocation; an example which he had imposed upon his own first-born, and thus became established the custom of giving to a son of each Eliphalet the name of his father, in the pleasing hope that he who bore the revered appellation might be called to serve in the Lord's fold, as shepherd of the flock; which hope had generally been realized. In due course that Eliphalet who was destined to beget Beverley had been called, had answered the summons, and at the birth of his only son, had, with confident expectation of a similar call to the latter, named his name "Eliphalet."
In time the call was heard. The youth, fully assured that he, like the ancestral Eliphalets, would find his field of labor in the vineyard of God, had gone so far in acceptance of his solemn duty as to enter the well-known Theological Seminary at Hampton, there to fit himself for the only future he had ever contemplated.
Then a shock had come,—a great legacy from one of two California brothers, both long given up as dead. From the moment this fortune came into his possession, the father of Beverley Claghorn, always a stern and gloomy man, the product of a ruthless creed, knew no day of peace. He craved worldly distinction—not the pleasures which beckoned his son—with a craving which only a starved nature with powers fitting to the world can know. On the other hand, a rigid sense of duty, perhaps, too, the gloomy joy of martyrdom, urged him to reject a temptation which he persuaded himself was offered by the Prince of Darkness. He remained outwardly true to his duty, an unhappy soldier at the post assigned him, and died as his fathers had died, in the odor of sanctity; in his heart hankering to the last for the joys offered by the world to him who has wealth, and to the last sternly rejecting them.
Secretly, though with bitter self-condemnation, he had approved his son's renunciation of the theological course. Not with his lips. It was impossible for him, stubbornly believing, as he had always believed, though now with the frequent doubts and fears of the new standpoint he occupied, to openly approve the intentions displayed by the youth. Yet he acquiesced in silence, secretly hoping to see the son, who had commenced the study of the law, a power in the State. That he was never to see, and it was well that he died before the renegade Eliphalet had extinguished such hope by voluntary exile.
Beverley's history, or at least that portion of it which he chose to impart, was told in reply to the eager questioning of Jared. Perhaps he was not sorry that his old fellow-student should note his air of man of fashion and aristocrat, and he set forth the renown of the de Fleury lineage, innocently shocking his cousin by explaining the meaning and glory of that bar sinister, which he himself revered.
Jared, on his part, narrated at much greater length than his auditor sympathetically appreciated, the history of his own life. He, too, had married brilliantly—a Morley, as he informed his cousin, and one who, dying, had left him well endowed with this world's goods, and it may be that it was by reason of this fact, as well as because of superior attainments, that the speaker had developed into a teacher in that same seminary where the two had been fellow-students.
"Yes," he said in a tone of satisfaction, "I hold down the chair of Biblical Theology in Hampton. You would hardly recognize the old Sem, El—Beverley."
"I suppose not. I shall make a flying trip there some day."
"A flying trip! Surely you don't intend to abandon your country forever?"
"Not unlikely. You see, I am more of a Frenchman than anything else, and my daughter is quite French."