his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
left hand and burst into tears.

"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
right off."

"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.

And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
throat.

* * * * *

The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
the room.

"Come over there, all of you; we want you."

They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"

"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
by Mr. Jennings and Milton.

While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.

"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
he'd gone to bed all right, but when I was going out to the barn I
stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so't we wouldn't hear him."

"I dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she
jest slumped down in a chair an set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I
come over to see you."

Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
himself was horrible and seemed impossible.

The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
vast, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
not suicide.

There was a sort of majesty in the figure half-buried in the snow. His
hands were clenched, and there w