the couch.

A step behind him did not interrupt the soft pleadings of the tearful
voice.

"Dad, dad! Won't you speak to me? You _must_ hold out. The doctor has
come. Dad, old daddie mine. Speak! Speak!"

The eyes opened, but there was no expression in them. The mouth closed
convulsively, and as he leaned close he heard the last message: "God
bless you, boy!... Take ... care ... of ... yourself."

Warren's face was buried on the bosom as it ceased to breathe. A kindly
touch on his shoulder brought him to a knowledge of the doctor's
presence.

"It's so good that you arrived in time, Warren," was the soft-voiced
comment. "Your father passed away happy, I know--he had held himself to
this life by a marvelous will-power until you came. Steady yourself
now."

The doctor knelt by the couch and, with the manly tenderness of an old
family friend, crossed the tired patrician hands above that valiant
heart.

Warren Jarvis answered not. He walked toward the window again. He
peered out into the great, black, miserable, lonely void stretching
away toward the southeast. In those distant hills, beyond his vision
but familiar as the landmarks of his boyhood, he knew the cowardly
assassin of his parents was exulting over the cruel success.

Not a tear came to his relief. His pleasant face hardened to the
rigidity of a stone image. The sinews of his athletic frame thrilled
with a new emotion--the feud hatred inherited through generations of
Kentucky fighters. He would have gladly given his own life for the
sublime pleasure of throttling with his bare hands the scoundrel who
had wiped out all that was fine and sweet in his life.

Behind him the doctor gave whispered orders to Mandy and two tearful
women neighbors who had quietly slipped into the house. Warren did not
notice them in his abstraction; they respected his suffering by leaving
the room without a greeting.

As he stood there the soft spring breeze fluttered the curtains of the
broad parlor windows, bearing in the fragrance of the vines on the
portico outside. It was all so silent and different from the brilliant
social life he had left behind in New York. Warren's whole life seemed
to flit past him, as he stood there now, with the impersonality of a
kaleidoscope.

He remembered the early years on this beautiful Blue Grass estate of
his father's ... the romantic boyhood of the South, enlivened by
horseback rides, hunting trips, boating, fishing--those elemental
cou