hreshold. "Did you say--ah--that mint was all gone, Unc'
Jefferson?"

Uncle Jefferson's lips relaxed in a wide grin. "Ah reck'n dah's er few
stray sprigs lef', suh. Step in en mek yo'se'f et home. Ef Mars' John
see yo', he be mought'ly hoped up. Ah gwineter mix yo' dat julep in two
shakes!"

He disappeared around the corner of the porch and the major strode into
the hall, threw his gray slouch hat on the table, and sat down.

It was quiet and peaceful, that ancient hall. He fell to thinking of the
many times, of old, when he had sat there. The house was the same again,
now. It had waked from a thirty-years' slumber to a renewed prime. Only
he had lived on meanwhile and now was old! He sighed.

How gay the place had been the night of the ball, with the lights and
roses and music! He remembered what the doctor had said about Valiant
and Shirley--it had lain ever since in his mind, a painful speculation.
The recollection roused another thought from which he shrank. He stirred
uneasily. What on earth kept that old darky so long over that julep?

A slight noise made him turn his head. But nothing moved. Only a creak
of the woodwork, he thought, and settled back again in his chair.

It was, in fact, a stealthy footfall he had heard. It came from the
library, where a shabby figure crouched, listening, in the corner behind
the tapestried screen--a man evilly clad, with a scarred cheek.

It had been with no good purpose that Greef King had dogged the major
these last days. He hugged a hot hatred grown to white heat in six years
of prison labor within bleak walls at the clicking shoe-machine, or with
the chain-gang on blazing or frosty turnpikes. He had slunk behind him
that afternoon, creeping up the drive under cover of the bushes, and
while the other talked with Uncle Jefferson, had skirted the house and
entered from the farther side, through an open French window. Now as he
peered from behind the screen, a poker, snatched from the fireplace, was
in his hand. His furtive gaze fell upon a morocco-covered case on a
commode by his side. He lifted its lid and his eyes narrowed as he saw
that it held a pistol. He set down the poker noiselessly and took the
weapon. He tilted it--it was rusted, but there were loads in the
chambers. He crouched lower, with a whispered curse: the major was
coming into the library, but not alone--the old nigger was with him!

Uncle Jefferson bore a tray with a frosted goblet over whose rim peeped