tary staring at
his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
girl rigged out like that!

Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!

The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?

The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.

At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.

* * * * *

During the wee