meone like that?" she asked.

His forehead flushed.

"She married my father," he said, "and he was a drunken maniac and broke
her heart. I saw it break. When I first remember her, she was a lovely
young girl with eyes like a gazelle's--and she cried all their beauty
away, and grew tired and old and haggard before I was twelve. He is dead,
but I hate him!"

"Oh!" she said; "you have been lonely!"

"I have been something worse than that!" he answered, and the gloom came
back to his face. "I have been afraid."

"Afraid!" said Sheba. "Of what?"

"That I might end like him. How do I know? It is in my blood."

"Oh, no!" she cried.

"We have nearly all been like that," he said. "He was the maddest of them
all, but he was only like many of the others. We grow tall, we De
Willoughbys, we have black eyes, we drink and we make ourselves insane
with morphine. It's a ghastly thing to think of," he shuddered. "When I
am lonely, I think of it night and day."

"You must not," she said. "I--I will help you to forget it."

"I have often wondered if there was anyone who could," he answered. "I
think perhaps you might."

When they returned to the Cross-roads there were several customers
loitering on the post-office porch, awaiting their arrival, and
endeavouring to wear an air of concealing no object whatever. The
uneventful lives they led year after year made men and women alike avid
for anything of the nature of news or incident. In some mysterious way
the air itself seemed to communicate to them anything of interest which
might be impending. Big Tom had not felt inclined to be diffuse on the
subject of the arrival of his nephew, but each customer who brought in a
pail of butter or eggs, a roll of jeans or a pair of chickens, seemed to
become enlightened at once as to the position of affairs.

"Ye see," Tom heard Doty confiding to a friend as they sat together
outside a window of the store; "ye see, it's this way--the D'Willerbys
was born 'ristycrats. I dunno as ye'd think it to look at Tom. Thar's a
heap _to_ Tom, but he ain't _my_ idee of a 'ristycrat. My idee is thet
mebbe he let out from D'lisleville kase he warn't 'ristycratic enough fur
'em. Thar wus a heap of property in the family, 'pears like. An' now the
hull lot of 'em's dead 'cept this yere boy that come last night. Stamps
hes seen him in D'lisleville, an' he says he's a-stavin' lookin' young
feller, an' thet thar's somethin' about a claim on the Guv'ment thet e