d through his heart. As a boy he hardly knew the meaning of
the word--the grim looks of the kinsmen, the tear-stained face of his
mother, had been little explanation--little had been said. But _now_
the iron of vengeance had entered his soul; and he turned about
suddenly, facing the body of the colonel.

Advancing toward the settle, he knelt by the body, even as a knight of
old, to take his vows. He raised his clenched right hand.

"Father! I swear by my love for you and my mother that I will wipe out
the Marcums, cost what it may. I will devote my life to settling the
score Jim Marcum has made. I swear it to you, father!"

It seemed to him as though a faint smile of approbation flitted across
the face despite the seal of the Great Calm. Even as he knelt there,
his quick brain began to lay the plans--and then ... then he remembered
what he must see upstairs! His brief moments in the old home had been
so absorbed by the dying words of his sire, by the engulfing flame of
hate which had burned away all the sweetness of the environment, that
he had selfishly forgotten everything but his own grief.

He staggered to his feet and walked slowly from the room.

Outside the door, on an old-fashioned chair in the long corridor
running from portico to kitchen, he found faithful Rusty, sobbing with
his face in his hands.

"Oh, Marse Warren! Oh, Marse Warren!"

"Rusty, call Mandy," was the simple answer.

Rusty hastened to obey. The woman was assisting the two neighbors in
some preparations on the floor above. She came down the stairs
tremulously, catching his outstretched hand and kissing it impetuously.

"Where is _she_, Mandy?" he asked, in a stifled voice.

Mandy spoke not, but ascended the stairway, as Warren followed with
bowed head. Each broad step seemed steeper than the one below. At last
he raised his eyes before the doorway of his parents' bedroom. Mandy
stepped aside.

Within, on a little mahogany sewing-table, burned a dozen candles in
his great-grandmother's Colonial candelabra. He turned unsteadily to
the right, and saw her!

"O mother, mother!..."

That was all.

II

THE BLIND PURSUIT

The sad days immediately following the double funeral were so filled
with visits from relatives and old friends, legal transactions
necessary for the transfer of the estate of the old colonel, a
successful tobacco factor in his time, and a hundred and one other
engrossments, that in the months afterward they