you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor,
and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that
certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and
a little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into
MOVING businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if
you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were." He cleared
his throat and finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take a month's
vacation and come back and go to it?"

"No," said Roscoe, listlessly. "I'm through."

"All right," said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
"Good-by."

Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
"Best I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. "I
figure it out a good deal like this," he said. "I didn't KNOW my job
was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what
I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and
the--the trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I
am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on
whiskey--and that put the finish to me! I--I'm not hitting it as hard as
I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a
little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I don't know. I'm all
in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a
few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know
it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your
daughter-in-law and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything
wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had
done--encouraging that fellow to hang around her after he began trying
to flirt with her, and losing her head over him the way she did. I don't
deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll
never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's
nature." Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.
"A woman craves society, and gaiety, and