h the toddies and eggnog had
been drunk. The smell of rum and lemons intermingled with the smoke of
snuffed-out candle wicks greeted his nostrils--a smell he remembered for
years and always with a shudder.

There had evidently been a heated discussion, for his father was walking
up and down the room, his face flushed, his black eyes blazing with
suppressed anger, his plum-colored coat unbuttoned as if to give him
more breathing space, his silk scarf slightly awry. St. George Temple
must have been the cause of his wrath, for the latter's voice was
reverberating through the room as Harry stepped in.

"I tell you, Talbot, you shall not--you DARE not!" St. George was
exclaiming, his voice rising in the intensity of his indignation. His
face was set, his eyes blazing; all his muscles taut. He stood like an
avenging knight guarding some pathway. Harry looked on in amazement--he
had never seen his uncle like this before.

The colonel wheeled about suddenly and raised his clenched hand. He
seemed to be nervously unstrung and for a moment to have lost his
self-control.

"Stop, St. George!" he thundered. "Stop instantly! Not another word, do
you hear me? Don't strain a friendship that has lasted from boyhood or
I may forget myself as you have done. No man can tell me what I shall
or shall not do when my honor is at stake. Never before has a Rutter
disgraced himself and his blood. I am done with him, I tell you!"

"But the man will get well!" hissed St. George, striding forward and
confronting him. "Teackle has just said so--you heard him; we all heard
him!"

"That makes no difference; that does not relieve my son."

Rutter had now become aware of Harry's presence. So had the others, who
turned their heads in the boy's direction, but no one spoke. They had
not the lifelong friendship that made St. George immune, and few of them
would have dared to disagree with Talbot Rutter in anything.

"And now, sir"--here the colonel made a step towards where Harry stood,
the words falling as drops of water fall on a bared head--"I have
sent for you to tell you just what I have told these gentlemen. I have
informed them openly because I do not wish either my sense of honor or
my motives to be misunderstood. Your performances to-night have been so
dastardly and so ill-bred as to make it impossible for me ever to live
under the same roof with you again." Harry started and his lips parted
as if to speak, but he made no sound. "You have d