ging voice which he
tried to make cheerful. "It will pass, old fellow," he said, and could
have laughed aloud at the insincerity of his tone. "I know because I've
been there." And he added cynically, as a kind of sacrifice on the altar
of truth: "Everything will pass if you only wait long enough."

The man started and looked up. With an air of surprise he glanced round
the dingy room, at his wife, at the whimpering children, at the
dispassionate baby enthroned in his high chair, and at the majestic
profile of Darrow. "It's the rottenness of the whole blooming show," he
said doggedly. "It ain't just the hole I'm in. I could put up with that
if it wasn't for the rottenness of it all."

"I know," replied Stephen quietly. "There are times when the show does
look rotten, but we're all in it together."

Then, because he felt that he could stand it no longer, he turned
abruptly, and went out into the dusk of the area. In a few minutes
Darrow joined him, and in silence the two men felt their way up the
brick steps to the bare ground of the front yard.

"I don't know what I ought to do, but I've got to do something," said
Stephen, when he had opened the gate and passed through to the pavement
where the car waited. Lifting his sensitive young face, he stared up at
the row of decaying tenements. "What places for homes!"

For a moment Darrow looked at him without speaking; and then he
answered in a voice which sounded as impersonal as the distant rumble of
street cars. "I thought you might be interested because these houses,
these and the other rows on the next block or two, are part of the
Culpeper estate."

"The Culpeper estate?" repeated Stephen in an expressionless tone; and
raising his eyes again he looked up at the bleak houses. In that
instant, it seemed to him that he was seeing, not the sharp projection
of the roofs against the ashen sky, but a long line of pleasant and
prosperous generations. Beyond him stood his father, beyond his father
stood his grandfather, beyond the tranquil succession of his
grandfathers stood--what? Civilization? Humanity?

"Do you mean," he asked quietly, "that we--our family--own these
houses?"

"The whole block, and the next, and the next. It is the Culpeper estate.
You've never seen 'em before, I reckon. I doubt even if your father has
ever seen 'em. The agent attends to all this, and if the agent didn't
see that the rents were as high as people would pay, or were paying in
the next