had your own way too many years. And now
you can't have it, see!" Then, as the old man again moved forward in his
chair, he added: "Now, don't get into a passion again; calm yourself,
because I warn you--this is your last chance. I'm a man of my word; and
what I say, I do."

By a violent and unsuspected effort the old man jerked himself up and
reached the bell. Mr. Ventnor heard it ring, and said sharply:

"Mind you, it's nothing to me which you do. I came for your own good.
Please yourself. Well?"

He was answered by the click of the door and the old man's husky voice:

"Show this hound out! And then come back!"

Mr. Ventnor had presence of mind enough not to shake his fist.
Muttering: "Very well, Mr. Heythorp! Ah! Very well!" he moved with
dignity to the door. The careful shepherding of the servant renewed the
fire of his anger. Hound! He had been called a hound!

3

After seeing Mr. Ventnor off the premises the man Meller returned to his
master, whose face looked very odd--"all patchy-like," as he put it in
the servants' hall, as though the blood driven to his head had mottled
for good the snowy whiteness of the forehead. He received the unexpected
order:

"Get me a hot bath ready, and put some pine stuff in it."

When the old man was seated there, the valet asked:

"How long shall I give you, sir?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Very good, sir."

Lying in that steaming brown fragrant liquid, old Heythorp heaved a
stertorous sigh. By losing his temper with that ill-conditioned cur he
had cooked his goose. It was done to a turn; and he was a ruined man.
If only--oh! if only he could have seized the fellow by the neck and
pitched him out of the room! To have lived to be so spoken to; to have
been unable to lift hand or foot, hardly even his voice--he would sooner
have been dead! Yes--sooner have been dead! A dumb and measureless
commotion was still at work in the recesses of that thick old body,
silver-brown in the dark water, whose steam he drew deep into his
wheezing lungs, as though for spiritual relief. To be beaten by a cur
like that! To have that common cad of a pettifogging lawyer drag him
down and kick him about; tumble a name which had stood high, in the
dust! The fellow had the power to make him a byword and a beggar! It
was incredible! But it was a fact. And to-morrow he would begin to do
it--perhaps had begun already. His tree had come down with a crash!
Eighty years-eighty good years! He regre