es, it is
advice worth following. I learned it long ago--a little difference of
opinion--and the pages of the great philosopher--"

He raised his arm and glanced at it critically.

"Words well placed--is it not wonderful, their steadying effect--the
deadly accuracy which their logic seems to impart to the hand and eye? A
man can be dangerous indeed with twenty pages of Voltaire behind him."

He took a pinch of snuff, and leaned forward to tap me gently on the
knee, his expression coldly genial.

"I have read all the works of Voltaire, Henry, read them many times."

Unbidden, a picture of him came before me in a room with gilt chairs and
candelabra whose glass pendants sparkled in the mild yellow light--with a
smell of powder mingling strangely with the scent of flowers.

"But why," he concluded, "should I be more explicit than Mr. Aiken? To
fear nothing, say nothing. It is a maxim followed by so many politicians.
Strange that it still stays valuable. Strange--"

And he waved his hand in a negligent gesture of deprecation.

"Why, indeed, be more explicit," I rejoined. "Your sudden interest is
quite enough to leave me overcome, sir, when, after years of neglect, you
see to it I ride out safely of an afternoon."

He tapped his snuff box thoughtfully.

"Coincidence again, Henry, that is all. How was I to know you would be
outside Ned Aiken's house while I was within?"

"And how should I know that paternal care would prompt you to remain
within while I was without?"

For a second it seemed to me that my father was going to laugh--for a
fraction of a second something like astonishment seemed to take
possession of him. Then Brutus appeared in the doorway.

"My son," he said, as I followed him to supper, "I must compliment you.
Positively you improve upon acquaintance."

III

I had remembered him as a man who disliked talk. I had often seen him
sit for hours on end without a word, looking at nothing in particular,
with his expressionless serenity. But on this particular evening the
day's activities appeared to have made his social instincts vividly
assertive, and to arouse him to unusual, and almost unnatural animation.
As we sat at a small round table beside the dining room fireplace, he
launched into a cheerful discourse, ignoring completely any displeasure
I attempted to assume. The great room with its dingy wainscot only half
lighted by the candles on the table before us, was cluttered with a
hundr