celyn--nothing
tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became
morbid, believing he could read reproach in men's eyes, detect sarcasm
in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing
now, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where his
father and his grandfather's father had been born. Yet even here among
the Sagamore Hills he had found it--that haunting hint that honor had
been moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men.

He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. The
bird's cruel eyes regarded him steadily.

"You wholesale murderer," thought Gordon, "I'll just give you a charge
of shot."

But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burst
into an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush's melody, and,
spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the sunshine.

"That's a new trick to me," said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear such
music from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sake
of its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush.

The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; he
smelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentians
wistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could ever
unseal.

In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layers
of jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenly
west, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behind
him his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gun
under his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, driving
blindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood's depths.

Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning.

When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motioned
to heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunks
glimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a few
dainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrel
scolded incessantly.

As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier,
something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig,
freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark.

After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into the
thicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig,
freshly bro