it's taxes, or a quick
consumption, or a wife and children. And as for those last, there
doesn't seem to be much need of that lately. I have never seen the
time since I came into the world when it was quite so hard to get
things, or quite so easy to get rid of them, as it is now. Say the
word, Henry, and I'll draw up the deed of gift."

Henry looked confused. His eyes fell before the lawyer's sarcastic
glance. "You are talking tomfool nonsense," he said, scowling. "The
property isn't mine; it's my wife's."

"Sylvia never crossed you in anything. She'd give it up fast enough
if she got it through her head how downright miserable it was making
you," returned the lawyer, maliciously. Then Sidney relented. There
was something pathetic, even tragic, about Henry Whitman's sheer
inability to enjoy as he might once have done the good things of
life, and his desperate clutch of them in flat contradiction to his
words. "Let's drop it," said the lawyer. "I'm glad you have the
property and can have a little ease, even if it doesn't mean to you
what it once would. Let's have a glass of that grape wine."

Sidney Meeks had his own small amusement in the world. He was one of
those who cannot exist without one, and in lieu of anything else he
had turned early in life toward making wines from many things which
his native soil produced. He had become reasonably sure, at an early
age, that he should achieve no great success in his profession.
Indeed, he was lazily conscious that he had no fierce ambition to do
so. Sidney Meeks was not an ambitious man in large matters. But he
had taken immense comfort in toiling in a little vineyard behind his
house, and also in making curious wines and cordials from many
unusual ingredients. Sidney had stored in his cellar wines from elder
flowers, from elderberries, from daisies, from rhubarb, from clover,
and currants, and many other fruits and flowers, besides grapes. He
was wont to dispense these curious brews to his callers with great
pride. But he took especial pride in a grape wine which he had made
from selected grapes thirty years ago. This wine had a peculiar
bouquet due to something which Sidney had added to the grape-juice,
the secret of which he would never divulge.

It was some of this golden wine which Sidney now produced. Henry
drank two glasses, and the tense muscles around his mouth relaxed.
Sidney smiled. "Don't know what gives it that scent and taste, do
you?" asked Sidney. "Well