cross--the
General"--he smiled--"she don't understand, she's built different."

He was silent a while. Then he said: "I am old an' have nothin'."

He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to
the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add
that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily
the problem of far greater things.

"If I only had my health," said Conway, "but this cursed rheumatism!"

"Some of us has been so used to benefits," said the old man, "that
it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready
to blame God for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us.
We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by
God's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily--in the
very air we breathe--and yet we live.

"I'll talk square with you, Ned--though you may hate me for it. Every
misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to
whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd
have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value
of good blood in man or hoss--it's the unknown quantity that makes him
ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the
hands of God an' our pedigree."

"Do you think I've got a show yet?" asked Conway, looking up.

"Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts God an' prays. You can't
down that man. Your people were men--brave an' honest men. They
conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They
overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you
into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power
to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form?
You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds.
But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by
hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies--it
was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an
hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight
them for the blood of the thing--as the bred-out Spaniards fight
bulls. He took his cocktails as a gentleman--you as a drunkard."

The old man was excited, indignant, fearless.

Conway looked at him in wonder akin to fear. Even as the idolaters of
old looked at Jeremiah and Isaiah.

"Why--why is it"--went on the old man earnestly, rising and shaking
hi