head and instantly
killed.

Public opinion, indeed, around Kennedy Square, was, if the truth be
told, undergoing many and serious changes. For not only the duel but
some other of the traditional customs dear to the old regime were
falling into disrepute--especially the open sideboards, synonymous
with the lavish hospitality of the best houses. While most of the older
heads, brought up on the finer and rarer wines, knew to a glass the
limit of their endurance, the younger bloods were constantly losing
control of themselves, a fact which was causing the greatest anxiety
among the mothers of Kennedy Square.

This growing antipathy had been hastened and solidified by another
tragedy quite as widely discussed as the Cocheran and May duel--more so,
in fact, since this particular victim of too many toddies had been the
heir of one of the oldest residents about Kennedy Square--a brilliant
young surgeon, self-exiled because of his habits, who had been thrown
from his horse on the Indian frontier--an Iowa town, really--shattering
his leg and making its amputation necessary. There being but one other
man in the rough camp who had ever seen a knife used--and he but a
student--the wounded surgeon had directed the amputation himself, even
to the tying of the arteries and the bandages and splints. Only then did
he collapse. The hero--and he was a hero to every one who knew of his
coolness and pluck, in spite of his recognized weakness--had returned to
his father's house on Kennedy Square on crutches, there to consult some
specialists, the leg still troubling him. As the cripple's bedroom was
at the top of the first flight of stairs, the steps of which--it being
summer--were covered with China matting, he was obliged to drag himself
up its incline whenever he was in want of something he must fetch
himself. One of these necessities was a certain squat bottle like those
which had graced the old sideboards. Half a dozen times a day would he
adjust his crutches, their steel points preventing his slipping, and
mount the stairs to his room, one step at a time.

Some months after, when the matting was taken up, the mother took her
youngest boy--he was then fifteen--to the steps:

"Do you see the dents of your brother's crutches?--count them. Every one
was a nail in his coffin." They were--for the invalid died that winter.

These marked changes in public opinion, imperceptible as they had been
at first, were gradually paving the way, it m