up----

The chapters in which he wrote of love--for there was a woman in the
story--were more beautiful than Randy realized. It was of a boy's love
that he told--delicately. It was his own story of love denied, yet
enriching a life.

Yet--because man cannot live up always to the measure of his own vision,
there came often between Randy and the written page the image of George
Dalton, smiling and insolent. And he would lay down his pen, and lean
his head on his hand, and gaze into space, and sometimes he would speak
out in the silence. "I will make him suffer."

It was in one of these moments that he saw how it might be done. "He
would let fruit drop to the ground and rot if no other man wanted it,"
he analyzed keenly, "but if another man tried to pick it up, he would
fight for it."

Dalton was still at King's Crest. Mrs. Waterman had not responded
satisfactorily to the operation. The doctors had grave doubts as to her
recovery. Madge was convalescing at the Flippins'.

Randy had been content, hitherto, to receive bulletins indirectly from
both of the invalids. But on the morning following the birth of his
great idea he rode on horseback to King's Crest. He looked well on
horseback, and in his corduroys, with a soft shirt and flowing tie, a
soft felt hat, he was at his best.

He found George and Oscar on the west terrace, shaded by blue and
white-striped awnings, with a macaw, red and blue on a perch--a peacock
glimmering at the foot of the steps--and the garden blazing beyond.

There were iced drinks in tall glasses--a litter of cigarettes on
smoking-stands, magazines and newspapers on the stone floors, packs of
cards on a small table. Oscar, hunched up in a high-backed Chinese
chair, was white and miserable. George looked bored to extinction.

Randy, coming in, gave a clear-cut impression of strength and youth.

"Mother sent some wine jelly for Mrs. Waterman," he said to Oscar. "It
was made from an old recipe, and she thought it might be different. And
there were some hundred-leaved roses from our bush. I gave them to your
man."

Oscar brightened. He was grateful for the kindness of these queer
neighbors of his who would have nothing to do with him and his wife when
they were well, and who had seemed to care not at all for his money. But
who, now that sickness had come and sorrow, offered themselves and their
possessions unstintedly.

"I'll go and see that Flora gets them," he said. "She hasn't any
appet