himself.

"Let us take a walk in the grounds," he suggested, after they had met
Doctor Bodineau and inspected the quarters assigned to Al. "The carriage
leaves for the station in half an hour, and we'll just have time."

"It's beautiful," he remarked a moment later. Under his feet was
the velvet grass, the trees arched overhead, and he stood in mottled
sunshine. "I wish I could stay for a month."

"I'll trade places with you," Al said quickly.

George laughed it off, but he felt a sinking of the heart.

"Look at that oak!" he cried. "And that woodpecker! Isn't he a beauty!"

"I don't like it here," he heard his brother mutter.

George's lips tightened in preparation for the struggle, but he said--

"I'm going to send Mary and the children off to the mountains. She needs
it, and so do they. And when you're in shape, I'll send you right on to
join them. Then you can take your summer vacation before you come back
to the office."

"I'm not going to stay in this damned hole, for all you talk about it,"
Al announced abruptly.

"Yes you are, and you're going to get your health and strength back
again, so that the look of you will put the colour in Mary's cheeks
where it used to be."

"I'm going back with you." Al's voice was firm. "I'm going to take the
same train back. It's about time for that carriage, I guess."

"I haven't told you all my plans," George tried to go on, but Al cut him
off.

"You might as well quit that. I don't want any of your soapy talking.
You treat me like a child. I'm not a child. My mind's made up, and I'll
show you how long it can stay made up. You needn't talk to me. I don't
care a rap for what you're going to say."

A baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all
the world like a cornered rat, desperate and ready to fight. As George
looked at him he remembered back to their childhood, and it came to him
that at last was aroused in Al the same old stubborn strain that had
enabled him, as a child, to stand against all force and persuasion.

George abandoned hope. He had lost. This creature was not human. The
last fine instinct of the human had fled. It was a brute, sluggish
and stolid, impossible to move--just the raw stuff of life, combative,
rebellious, and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt
in himself the rising up of a similar brute. He became suddenly aware
that his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew
the desir