This story begins with some of the words used by the wrathful old man; many others, far more bitter and cruel, sank deep into Mark's memory, and grieved him to the heart, but they need not be repeated here.
"If," said Mr. Walthew, "you are resolved to turn your back on home, and choose a new road for yourself, go, and never darken my doors again. But if you think of being kept in idleness by the old father's money, you will find your mistake out; I will never leave you a penny! You choose now—once and for all!"
"Then I must choose to go, father," said Mark. "God has given me some talents to account for, and I must use them. I will never ask you for money; but some day I hope I shall hear you say I have chosen wisely. If you are not now proud of my success—and, oh, I had so counted on hearing you and mother say, 'Well done, Mark!'—you shall not be ashamed of me in after years."
"I am proud of you, Mark," cried Mrs. Walthew, "so proud that I would not have you stay and be tied down from youth to age, to such a life as we have led! We are too old to change; but for you it would be a living death. Go, my son, my one darling, if so be you can choose, and have no fear of want before your eyes. I have been twenty-eight years always going the same daily round, without change in anything, except the growing older. Talk of money! What is it worth if it never gives a day's brightness, and the only pleasure the owner has is the being able to say, 'I have so many thousands of pounds, or hundreds of acres'?"
"Listen, my boy. It is terrible for a wife to take the opposite side to her husband, but I could not bear to think of your growing into a man like your father. Not that he is dishonest! To gain a hundred pounds, he would not take a penny wrongfully, or refuse to pay what is fairly due. He has only robbed himself and me of everything that money could have bought in the way of happiness for ourselves, or enabled us to give it to other people. Those who have wealth, and neither the heart to spend nor give of their abundance, are the poorest of the poor. You may be blessedly rich with very little money."
Need it be said that Daniel Walthew was not present when his wife spoke these words to her son? They cheered Mark, for they told him that his mother's blessing would be on his head, his mother's prayers ever offered on his behalf. And both hoped that in time the father's views might change. How could he stand singly against the world?
The world meant Claybury and the country round, for naturally Mark's success had made his friends proud of him—none more so than the Mitchesons, and most of all his friend Dolly. Many a time the true-hearted girl had cheered the boy on, until her own brothers used to say that the adopted one took the first place of all in her thoughts, and had more than an eighth share thereof.
Mr. Mitcheson tried to move Mr. Walthew from his resolve, but in vain. The headmaster of the school used his influence, and spoke in such terms of Mark's talents and industry, that any other man would have been delighted beyond measure to call him son.
Not so Daniel Walthew. "I don't hold with learning that takes a man out of his proper spear, and makes him ashamed of the honest work his father does," said he, and refused to hear any argument on the other side, or to speak again on the subject.
So the cottage door closed behind Mark Walthew, and all the articles purchased for his use went with him. The old man would not suffer a scrap belonging to him to remain, and the goodly pile of handsome books which had brightened the dingy parlour no longer lay on its table, to tell of the boy's school victories.