The Brentons   By: Anna Chapin Ray (1865-1945)

ANNA CHAPIN RAY

THE DOMINANT STRAIN BY THE GOOD STE. ANNE ON THE FIRING LINE HEARTS AND CREEDS ACKROYD OF THE FACULTY QUICKENED THE BRIDGE BUILDERS OVER THE QUICKSANDS A WOMAN WITH A PURPOSE THE BRENTONS

[Illustration: Catia put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands around her cup.

Frontispiece. See Page 84]

THE BRENTONS

BY

ANNA CHAPIN RAY

Author of "A Woman with a Purpose," "The Bridge Builders," etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY WILSON C. DEXTER

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1912

Copyright, 1912, By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, January, 1912

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

Transcriber's Note:

Beginning with Chapter 19 the spelling of Kathryn inexplicably changes to Katherine.

The Table of Contents is not contained in the original book. It has been generated for the convenience of the reader.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY ONE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER TWENTY TWO CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY THREE CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER TWENTY SIX CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER TWENTY NINE CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY ONE CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

THE BRENTONS

CHAPTER ONE

However archaic and conventional it may sound, it is the literal fact that young Scott Brenton was led into the ministry by the prayer of his widowed mother. Furthermore, the prayer was not made to him, but offered in secret and in all sincerity at the Throne of Grace.

"Oh, my dearest Lord and Master," she prayed, at her evening devotions upon her knees and with her work roughened hands clasped upon the gaudy patchwork quilt; "guide Thou my son. Bring him to feel that his perfect happiness can come only from going forth to preach Thy word to all men."

And, as it chanced, the door of her room had been left slightly open. Scott Brenton, young and alert and full of enthusiasms which his years of grinding work and economy had been powerless to down, came leaping up the steps just then. The front door had been left unlocked for him. He closed it noiselessly behind him, and then started to run up the stairs. The murmur of his mother's voice checked him, stayed his step a moment, and then changed its pace. He went on up the stairs quite soberly, thoughtful, his face a little overcast.

It was now the middle of the Christmas holidays of his junior year. The day he had left college for the short vacation, his chemistry professor had sent for him and had said things to him about his last term's work and about his examination papers at the end of the term. The things were courteous as concerned the past; to Scott Brenton's mind, they were dazzling as concerned the future. The dazzle had endured until his mother's words had fallen on his ears. Then it had eclipsed itself, leaving him to wonder whether, after all, it had not been the ignis fatuus of self elation, and not the steady glow of truth. Scott Brenton was not much more given to introspection, at that epoch of his life, than is any other healthy youngster of nineteen. None the less, he slept curiously little, that night.