in
shaking tones curse Pompey Hollidew; only last week the red-headed
Crandall had sworn he would let his ground rot rather than slave for the
breed of Cannon. It was, apparently, a perpetual evil, an endless burden
for the shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in a trap of
circumstance.

Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall.
He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul
demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at the
time, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him for
assistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection--the money was
his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at the
Stenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in the
scale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of Valentine
Simmons, of Cannon.

He considered these facts totally ignorant of the fact that they were but
the reflection of his own inchoate need born in the anguish of his wife's
death; he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility--sharpened
by the hoarse cry from the stiffening lips of Lettice--to the world
without. He thought of the possibility before him neither as a scheme of
philanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation. He considered it
solely in the light of his own experience, as a practical measure to give
men their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The cost to himself would be
small--his money had faded from his conceptions, his necessities, as
absolutely as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by the touch of a
magic wand. He had never realized its potentiality; lately he had ignored
it with the contempt of supreme indifference. Now an actual employment for
it occupied his mind.

The stove glowed with calorific energy; General Jackson, who had been
lying at his feet, moved farther away. The lamplight grew faint and
reddish, and then expired, trailing a thin, penetrating odor. In the dark
the heated cylinder of the stove shone rosy, mysterious.

Gordon Makimmon was unaware of his own need; yet, at the anticipation of
the vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money in
opposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of a
sudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent blood
carried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endless
strife of bitter and rugged men