I was helping him off with his overcoat. "I repeat, my daughter, that
young man of yours is a very remarkable young man."

I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion, to expect
disaster.

"They have already walked upon my face," father explained. "There was no
stock. The box was empty. You and Ernest will have to get married pretty
quickly."

Father insisted on laboratory methods. He brought the Sierra Mills into
court, but he could not bring the books of the Sierra Mills into court.
He did not control the courts, and the Sierra Mills did. That explained
it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law, and the bare-faced robbery
held good.

It is almost laughable now, when I look back on it, the way father was
beaten. He met Wickson accidentally on the street in San Francisco,
and he told Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then father was
arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court, and bound
over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that when he got
home he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the
local papers! There was grave talk about the bacillus of violence that
infected all men who embraced socialism; and father, with his long and
peaceful life, was instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus
of violence worked. Also, it was asserted by more than one paper that
father's mind had weakened under the strain of scientific study, and
confinement in a state asylum for the insane was suggested. Nor was this
merely talk. It was an imminent peril. But father was wise enough to see
it. He had the Bishop's experience to lesson from, and he lessoned