ce of a fair-minded man painting extenuations into his portrait
of the absent Farquaharson.

"And you call this predisposition to looseness and license a thing to be
condoned, to be mixed with the blood of one's own posterity? Eben, I've
never seen you make excuses for ungodliness before." The fierce old face
suddenly cleared. "But there--there! This is all an imaginary danger.
I'll watch them, but I'm sure that these two have no such reprehensible
thought."

Mr. Tollman took up his hat and gloves. "I will see you again
to-morrow," he said, as he passed out of the library, leaving the old
puritan behind him immersed in a fresh anxiety.

It was not the intention of William Williams to act with unconscientious
haste--but he would watch and weigh the evidence. He prided himself on
his rigid adherence to justice, and escaped the knowledge that his sense
of justice was a crippled thing warped to the shape of casuistry. If he
had permitted the affliction, which God had visited upon him, to blind
his eyes against duty to his daughter, he must rouse himself and remedy
the matter. It was time to put such self-centered sin behind him and
make amends. In this self-assumption of the plenary right to regulate
the life of his daughter, or any one else, there was no element of
self-reproach. He held God's commission and acted for God!

The gradual, almost imperceptible change of manner was observable first
to the apprehensive eyes of Stuart Farquaharson himself. The Virginian's
standards as to his bearing in the face of hostility were definite and
could be summed up in the length of an epigram: Never to fail of
courtesy, but never to surrender more than half of any roadway to
aggression. Yet here was a situation of intricate bearings and a man
whom he could not fight. A brain must be dealt with, too old for
plasticity, like sculptor's clay hardened beyond amendment of form. A
man whose fighting blood is hot, but whose spirit of sportsmanship is
true, can sometimes maintain a difficult peace where another type would
fail, and that was the task Stuart set himself. That same spirit of
sportsmanship would have meant to Williams only a want of seriousness, a
making play out of life. But to Stuart it meant the nearest approach we
have to a survival of chivalry's ideals: a readiness to accept
punishment without complaint: a willingness to extend every fair
advantage to an adversary: a courage to strive to the uttermost without
regard to