[Gutenberg 21763] • The Brentons

Excerpt from *The Brentons* :

"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 mothers 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.