beam of light. But it shone through the
still tightly sealed double windows of Ailsa Mowbray's parlor, a
promise which, at the moment, possessed neither meaning nor appeal.

The widowed mother was standing near the wood stove which radiated a
welcome warmth, and still roared its winter song through its open
dampers. John Kars was leaning against the centre table. His serious
eyes were on the ruddy light shining under the damper of the stove.
His strong hands were gripping the woodwork of the table behind him.
His grip was something in the nature of a clutching support. His fixed
gaze was as though he had no desire to shift it to the face of the
woman on whom he had come to inflict the most cruel agony a woman may
endure.

"You have come to talk to me of Alec? Yes? What of him?" Ailsa
Mowbray's eyes, so steady, so handsome, eyes that claimed so much
likeness to Jessie's, were eager. Then, in a moment, a note of anxiety
found expression. "He--is well?"

The man's own suffering at that moment was lacerating. All that was in
him was stirred to its deepest note. It was as though he were about to
strike this woman down, a helpless, defenceless soul, and all his
manhood revolted. He could have wept tears of bitterness, such as he
had never dreamed could have been wrung from him.

"No."

"What--has happened? Quick! Tell me!"

The awful apprehension behind the mother's demand found no real outward
sign. She stood firmly--unwaveringly. Only was there a sudden
suppressed alarm in her voice.

Kars stirred. The jacket buttoned across his broad chest seemed to
stifle him. A mad longing possessed him to reach out and break
something. The pleasant warmth of the room had suddenly become
unbearable. He could no longer breathe in the atmosphere. He raised
his eyes to the mother's face for one moment. The next they sought
again the ruddy line of the stove.

"He--is dead."

"Dead? Oh, no! Not that! Oh--God help me!"

Kars had no recollection of a mother's love. He had no recollection of
anything but the hard blows in a cruel struggle for existence, beside a
man whose courage was invincible, but in whom the tender emotions at no
time found the smallest display. But all that which he had inherited
from the iron man who had founded his fortunes had failed to rob him of
any of the gentler humanity which his unremembered mother must have
bestowed upon him. His whole being shrank under the untold agony of