ace--the
way that foot slopes to the stirrup--why that's me--"

He stopped--he turned pale--he trembled with pride and rage. Then he
turned and walked into the room where Margaret Adams sat. She held
out her arms to him pleadingly.

But he did not notice her, and never before had she seen such a look
on his face as he said calmly:

"Mother, if you will come to the door I will show you my father."

Margaret Adams had already seen. She turned white with a hidden shame
as she said:

"Jimmie--Jimmie--who--who--?"

"No one," he shouted fiercely--"by God"--she had never before heard
him swear--"I tell you no one--on my honor as a Travis--no one! It
has come to me of itself--I know it--I feel it."

He was too excited to talk. He walked up and down the little room,
his proud head lifted and his eyes ablaze.

"I know now why I love honesty, why I despise those common things
beneath me--why I am not afraid--why I struck that boy as I did this
morning--why--" he walked into the little shed room that was his own
and came back with a long single barrel pistol in his hand and
fondled it lovingly--"why all my life I have been able to shoot this
as I have--"

He held in his hand a long, single barrel, rifle-bored duelling
pistol--of the type used by gentlemen at the beginning of the
century. Where he had got it she did not know, but always it had been
his plaything.

"O Jimmie--you would not--" exclaimed the woman rising and reaching
for it.

"Tush--" he said bitterly--"tush--that's the way Richard Travis
talks, ain't it? Does not my very voice sound like his? No--but I
expect you now, mother"--he said it softly--"tell me--tell me all
about it."

For a moment Margaret Adams was staggered. She only shook her head.

He looked at her cynically--then bitterly. A dangerous flash leaped
into his eyes.

"Then, by God," he cried fiercely, "this moment will I walk over to
his house with this pistol in my hand and I will ask him. If he fails
to tell me--damn him--I dare him--"

She jumped up and seized him in her arms.

"Promise me that if I tell you all--all, Jimmy, when you are
fifteen--promise me--will you be patient now--with poor mother, who
loves you so?" And she kissed him fondly again and again.

He looked into her eyes and saw all her suffering there.

The bitterness went out of his.

"I'll promise, mother," he said simply, and walked back into his
little room.

CHAPTER VIII

HARD-SHELL SUNDAY

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