shelves; it contained a flat, deal table, with a drawer, which his father used for a desk and two straight, cheap chairs and a swivel chair bought, secondhand, at a sheriff's sale when a local insurance agency had failed. The square of brown carpet was a masterpiece of matched ends and corners which had been trimmed off when a new strip was laid in the aisle of the church below.
There were four tall, narrow windows, one in each wall; and a characteristic of the room was that, late in the afternoon, the sun shone straight through it, in the west window and out the east. David knew no other room where the sun did that. The rising sun similarly shone through to the west, of course; and David, from his window in the house, used to watch the gleaming spot in the shadow of the steeple. That light, shining through, used to seem a mystic symbol of special power endowed upon his father in that room. There his father went to write his sermons; there he went to meditate and pray when perplexities came upon him; there his father, alone, underwent those spiritual experiences when he "felt the presence of God."
To David, this room was more a solemn place of God than the pulpit in the church below. Sometimes, such as on Christmas day and during Sunday school entertainments, there might be merriment in the church but never was there merriment or lightness here. No one ever visited this room except on a serious errand; no child from the cottage ever played here.
A large, black Bible always was upon the desk; it was there now and it was open at some place in the new testament, David saw. His father sat before it
