it was every man's duty to read the Word of God for himself and to
follow where it led him. 

Thus the boy learned to think of life, not as something settled, but
as a place for adventure.  One must seek and seek; and in the end the
way of truth would be revealed to him.  He could see this zeal in his
mother's face, beautiful and delicate, even in the crude picture; and
Samuel did not know that the picture was crude, and wove his dreams
about it.  Sometimes at twilight old Ephraim would talk about her, and
the tears would steal down his cheeks.  The one year that he had known
her had sufficed to change the course of his life; and he had been a
man past middle life, too, a widower with two children.  He had come
into the country as the foreman of a lumber camp back on the mountain. 

Samuel had always thought of his father as an old man; Ephraim had
been hurt by a vicious horse, and had aged rapidly after that.  He had
given up lumbering; it had not taken long to clear out that part of
the mountains.  Now the hills were swept bare, and the population had
found a new way of living.