't everything in this here world, after all," he added, as
his gaze traveled over the paintings and tapestries that lined the
great hall.

Above stairs an uncomfortable atmosphere of constraint settled upon
father and son. Both felt the awkwardness of the situation.

Young Carmody was a man with a heart as warm as his ways were wild. His
was an impulsive nature which acted upon first impressions. Loving
alike a fight or a frolic, he entered into either with a zest that made
of them events to be remembered. He glanced across to where his father
stood beside the table toying with a jade ink-well, and noted the
unwonted droop of the shoulders and the unfamiliar gaze of the gray
eyes in which the look of arrogance had dulled almost to softness--a
pathetic figure, standing there in his own house--alone--unloved--a
stranger to his only son.

The boy saw for the first time, not the banker, the dictator of high
finance--but the _man_. Could it be that here was something he had
missed? That through the long years since the death of his wife, the
sweet-faced mother whom the boy remembered so vividly, this strange,
inscrutable old man had craved the companionship of his son--had loved
him?

At that moment, had the elder man spoken the word--weakened, he would
have called it--the course of lives would have been changed. But the
moment passed. Hiram Carmody's shoulders squared to their accustomed
set, and his eyes hardened as he regarded his son.

"Well?" The word rang harsh, with a rising inflection that stung. The
younger man made no reply and favored the speaker with a level stare.

"And _you_ a Carmody!"

"Yes, I am a Carmody! But, thank God, I am only half Carmody! It is no
fault of mine that I bear the Carmody name! At heart I am a McKim!"

The young man's eyes narrowed, and the words flashed defiantly from his
lips. The shaft struck home. It was true. From the boy's babyhood the
father had realized it with fear in his heart.

The beautiful, dashing girl he had wooed so long ago; had married, and
had loved more deeply than she ever knew, was Eily McKim, descendant of
the long line of Fighting McKims, whose men-children for five hundred
years had loomed large in the world-wars of nations. Men of red blood
and indomitable courage--these, who pursued war for the very love of
the game, and who tasted blood in every clime, and under the flag of
every nation. Hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard-fighting cavaliers, upon
whose