ver said much about her father one way or the other, but I
always sort of guessed he wasn't all he might have been from her never
bringing us on to visit here until after he died. She used to look queer,
too, when folks congratulated her on having such a famous man for father.
All the big politicians of his day thought a lot of him. He _was_ as smart
as chain-lightning!"

"He was a disreputable old scalawag!" cried his other grandson. "Some of
the things Aunt Amelia has been telling me make me never want to come back
to this part of the country again. Do you know why Uncle Grid lived so
poor and scrimped and yet left no money? He'd been taking care of a whole
family grandfather had beside ours; and paying back some people
grandfather did out of a lot of money on a timber deal fifty years ago;
and making it up to a little village in the backwoods that grandfather
persuaded to bond itself for a railroad that he knew wouldn't go near it."

The two men stared at each other an instant, reviewing in a new light the
life that had just closed. "That's why he never married," said Eli
finally.

"No, that's what I said, but Aunt Amelia just went wild when I did. She
said ... gee!" he passed his hand over his eyes with a gesture of mental
confusion. "Ain't it strange what can go on under your eyes and you never
know it? Why, she says Uncle Grid was just like his father."

The words were not out of his mouth before the other's face of horror made
him aware of his mistake. "No! No! Not that! Heavens, no! I mean ... made
like him ... _wanted_ to be that kind, 'specially drink ..." His tongue,
unused to phrasing abstractions, stumbled and tripped in his haste to
correct the other's impression. "You know how much Uncle Grid used to look
like grandfather ... the same black hair and broad face and thick red lips
and a kind of knob on the end of his nose? Well, it seems he had his
father's insides, too ... _but his mother's conscience!_ I guess, from
what Aunt Amelia says, that the combination made life about as near Tophet
for him ...! She's the only one to know anything about it, because she's
lived with him always, you know, took him when grandmother died and he was
a child. She says when he was younger he was like a man fighting a wild
beast ... he didn't dare let up or rest. Some days he wouldn't stop
working at his desk all day long, not even to eat, and then he'd grab up a
piece of bread and go off for a long tearing tramp that'd