auded
heir. I have not forgotten the letters that I received from him, nor his
young eagerness to get at the land that is now his and that should have
been his nearly a year ago. Put the proofs before him. And I pray that
he may be quick and sure to deal out judgment and retribution. He is my
kinsman. Let him for me, as well as for himself, wield the lash that I
put in his hands.

"'Do these things for me, friend Placide, and believe that even in the
grave, I remain,

"'Very gratefully yours,

"'BRUCE GRIERSON.'"

The letter fell from Steering's hand and fluttered to the ground, while
he sat with his hands hanging limply from his knees for a moment.
"Grierson is dead! Grierson is dead!" he repeated. The funereal words
rang through his ears like a grand Praise-God. He knew that he ought to
be sorry and that he was inexpressibly glad, not because the grim old
man was dead--dead, with his malevolence reaching out toward Madeira,
spinning and twisting like a great cobweb snare from the grave--but
because of what must now happen, because vistas of wonderful beauty were
opening up through the long shadows of the Tigmores, because if the end
had come to the house of Grierson, beginning had come to the house of
Steering. Life, big, splendid, stretched out before him. Old Bernique
had risen and was pacing the banks of the Di nervously. Steering, too,
got to his feet. Going down to Bernique, he took the old man's hands in
his. Neither heard a little rustle up the bluff in the leafy bushes.

"Oh, Uncle Bernique!" said Steering, and stopped because of the wild
sound of his own voice. He saw that it would be dangerous for him to
try to talk with his mind in that high tremulous whirl. The old man
clung to him, silent, too, for a teeming moment.

"Now God above, why not Crit Madeira tell you that tr-r-ue way of
things?" shouted Bernique at last fiercely. "Why not?"

The two men looked into each other's eyes, Steering bearing up the old
man, who clutched him feverishly. When the Frenchman began to talk again
his teeth were chattering. "Why not? Hein? Because he t'ief. But God
above! We got those proof! Dead for mont's. And Madeira know it! The
Teegmores are yours for mont's, Mistaire Steering! And Madeira know it!
We put that fine man where he belong. We jail him! He t'ief! We r-r-uin
him, as he would r-r-uin you!"

"Ruin him!" Bruce said the words over measuredly. "We can do it easily.