le it had never occurred to him to think so, he
had been facing life pretty much alone for a decade. It would have
eased his surcharged spirit could he have shed a few manly tears, if
his wife had taken his leonine old head on her shoulder and lavished
upon him the caresses his hungry heart yearned for. Unfortunately, she
was that type of wife whose first and only thought is for her
children. She was aware only that he was in a softened mood, so she
said,

"Don't you think you've been a little hard on poor Jane, Hector dear?"

"No, I do not. She's cruel, selfish, and uncharitable."

"But you'll forgive her this once, won't you, dear?"

He considered.

"Well, if she doesn't heckle Donald--" he began, but she stopped
further proviso with a grateful kiss, and immediately followed Jane
up-stairs to break the good news to her. She and Jane then joined
Elizabeth in the latter's room, and the trio immediately held what
their graceless relative would have termed "a lodge of sorrow." Upon
motion of Jane, seconded by Elizabeth, it was unanimously resolved
that the honor of the family must be upheld. At all cost. They laid
out a plan of campaign.

XXI

Upon his arrival in Port Agnew, Donald called upon one Sam Carew. In
his youth, Mr. Carew had served his time as an undertaker's assistant,
but in Port Agnew his shingle proclaimed him to his world as a
"mortician." Owing to the low death-rate in that salubrious section,
however, Mr. Carew added to his labors those of a carpenter, and when
outside jobs of carpentering were scarce, he manufactured a few plain
and fancy coffins.

Donald routed Sam Carew out of bed with the news of Caleb Brent's
death and ordered him down to the Sawdust Pile in his capacity of
mortician; then he hastened there himself in advance of Mr. Carew. Nan
was in the tiny living-room, her head pillowed on the table, when
Donald entered, and when she had sobbed herself dry-eyed in his arms,
they went in to look at old Caleb. He had passed peacefully away an
hour after retiring for the night; Nan had straightened his limbs and
folded the gnarled hands over the still heart; in the great democracy
of death, his sad old face had settled into peaceful lines such as had
been present in the days when Nan was a child and she and her father
had been happy building a home on the Sawdust Pile. As Donald looked
at him and reflected on the tremendous epics of a career that the
world regarded as commonplace,