, in
battle, shoot his best friend. She resolved on the instant to go to the
stricken family and make such expiation there as was in her power. But
was there any certainty that the report of Jack's death was true?
Grievous mistakes of the same sort had been made repeatedly in the
public journals. She was not able to formulate any plan at first. Her
father was more morose than ever. He seemed in his way to deplore the
young man's death, but not in pity, as she soon learned. Death had
robbed him of a cruelly meditated revenge. She wisely made no comment
when this brutal feeling betrayed itself; but for the first time in her
life the girl shuddered at the sight of her father. The vague rumors of
years, that had been whispered about him--rumors which of old had fired
her soul with hot indignation, came back insidiously. She shuddered. Was
she to lose all--brother, lover, father--in this unnatural strife? She
had been so loyal to her father. She had been so proud of him when
others reviled. She had felt so serenely confident of the nobleness of
his heart, the generosity of his impulses. She had always been able to
mold him, as she thought. Could it be possible that he was human to her,
inhuman to the rest of the world? Then her mind, tortured by newly
awakened doubts, ran back over the events leading to the rupture with
the Spragues. She groaned at the retrospect. It was injustice that had
displaced Jack in the command of the company. It was injustice that had
marked her father's conduct in the Perley feud.

Grief is a logician of very direct methods. Its clarifying processes
work like light in darkness. Kate saw the past in her father's conduct
with terrifying vividness. She realized that it was her father's harsh
purpose that had arrayed Acredale against him. It was his pride and
arrogant obstinacy that had brought about the loss of all she loved. The
fates had immolated the helpless; were the fates preparing a still
bitterer expiation? Life had very little left for her now, but she
resolved that she would no longer be isolated by her father's enmities.
The great house had been gloomy enough for father and daughter during
the last miserable months, but he still fled to her for comfort. It was
one evening when he came in, apparently in better spirits than he had
shown since Wesley's death, that she told him what had been filling her
mind since Jack's death.

"O father, I think I see that our lives have been unworthy, if no