en the
shifting of a grain of gray matter never called into use before; or it
may have been due to some stranded red corpuscle which, dislodged by the
pressure he had lately been called upon to endure, had rushed headlong
through his veins scouring out everything in its way until it reached
his thinking apparatus. Whatever the cause, certain it was that the
change in the boy's view of life was as instantaneous as it was radical.

And this was quite possible when his blood is considered. There had
been, it is true, dominating tyrants way back in his ancestry, as well
as spend-thrifts, drunkards, roysterers, and gamesters, but so far as
the records showed there had never been a coward. That old fellow De
Ruyter, whose portrait hung at Moorlands and who might have been his
father, so great was the resemblance, had, so to speak, held a shovel in
one hand and a sword in the other in the days when he helped drown out
his own and his neighbors' estates to keep the haughty don from gobbling
up his country. One had but to look into Harry's face to be convinced
that he too would have followed in his footsteps had he lived in that
ancestor's time.

It was when the boy, smarting under his father's insult, was passing
under the blossoms of a wide-spreading magnolia, trying to get a glimpse
of Kate's face, if by any chance she should be at her window, that this
grain of gray matter, or lively red corpuscle--or whatever it might
have been--forced itself through. The breaking away was slow--little
by little--as an underground tunnel seeks an opening--but the light
increased with every thought-stroke, its blinding intensity becoming so
fierce at last that he came to a halt, his eyes on the ground, his whole
body tense, his mind in a whirl.

Suddenly his brain acted.

To sit down and snivel would do no good; to curse his father would
be useless and wicked; to force himself on Kate sheer madness.
But--BUT--BUT--he was twenty-two!--in perfect health and not ashamed
to look any man in the face. St. George loved him--so did his precious
mother, and Alec, and a host of others. Should he continue to sit in
ashes, swaddled in sackcloth--or should he meet the situation like
a man? Then as his mental vision became accustomed to the glare, two
things stood out clear in his mind--to win Kate back, no matter at what
cost--and to compel his father's respect.

His mother was the first to hear the music of this new note of
resolve, and she had