one in a moment.

"Ah!" uttered Robert Garrett in a long-drawn-out syllable, reaching for
the evening paper.

There had been another silent witness of this scene in the person of
a lad who stood within the door he had entered just as Mrs. Blaine had
appeared in the opposite way. He was a rather ill-favored schoolboy,
but his thoughts as he came forward with the lanky awkwardness of youth
and took a chair in chimney corner, were not of himself or his looks.

"Father," he said after some minutes had passed, the rattle of the
newspaper and the measured ticking of the clock being the only
disturbing sounds, "Father," he repeated, this time with a falling
inflection.

Startled uncomfortably at the unexpected address the father peered
frowningly at the boy with a gruff, "What!"

"Do you think it is just the fair and square thing to turn 'em out?"

"What do _you_ know about it, you young meddler. Keep quiet about
what does not concern you. You have enough to eat and wear--attend to
your own business."

There was no encouragement to go on, so young Robert sat and pondered
till his father, chafing under the silent rebuke personified in every
line of the son's uncomely face, sent him to his room.

In the other house there was little sleep; and for many succeeding days
the devoted Blaines, with heavy hearts, put by their idols one by one,
till at last the time-honored oaken doors closed upon them in relentless
banishment. It mattered not that amid new scenes prosperity once more
opened her sheltering arms and kept the wolf from the door. The new
owner of Deering Castle, as the villagers had admiringly christened the
grand old place, refused to sell it. Robert Garrett, with the littleness
born of a mean, cramped nature, clung to this coveted possession as the
one thing to be held, though all else were taken. He had money but knew
not how to enjoy it. His household, for the most part, reflected the
coarseness of his nature, and as time passed his retribution was meted
out in rebellious sons and daughters, who wasted his substance and
dragged down his name still further in the mire.

Twenty years had gone by. Herbert Blaine and his bright-eyed wife slept
in the city of the dead. With their latest breath they had, one by one,
adjured their beloved daughter, the only surviving child since the civil
war had laid low their three manly boys, to regain possession of the old
homestead. Time, they assured her, would make all things