s finger ominously--"that two generations of cocktails will breed
cock-fighters, and two generations of whiskey will breed a scrub? Do
you know where you'll end? In bein' a scrub? No, no--you will be dead
an' the worms will have et you--but"--he pointed to the house--"you
are fixin' to make scrubs of them--they will breed back.

"Go back to the plough--quit this whiskey and be the man your people
was. If you do not," he said rising to go--"God will crush you--not
kill you, but mangle you in the killin'."

"He has done that already," said Conway bitterly. "He has turned the
back of His hand on me."

"Not yet"--said the Bishop--"but it will fall and fall there." He
pointed to Helen, whose queenly head could be seen in the old parlor
as she trummed out a sad love song.

Conway blanched and his hand shook. He felt a nameless fear--never
felt before. He looked around, but the old man was gone. Afterwards,
as he remembered that afternoon, he wondered if, grown as the old man
had in faith, God had not also endowed him with the gift of
prophecy.

CHAPTER XVI

HELEN'S DESPAIR

An hour afterward, the old nurse found Helen at the piano, her head
bowed low over the old yellow keys. "It's gittin' t'wards dinner
time, chile," she said tenderly, "an' time I was dressin' my queen
gal for dinner an sendin' her out to get roses in her cheeks."

"Oh, Mammy, don't--don't dress me that way any more. I am--I am to
be--after this--just a mill girl, you know?"

There was a sob and her head sank lower over the piano.

"You may be for a while, but you'll always be a Conway"--and the old
woman struck an attitude with her arms akimbo and stood looking at
the portraits which hung on the parlor wall.

"That--that--makes it worse, Mammy." She wiped away her tears and
stood up, and her eyes took on a look Aunt Maria had not seen since
the old Governor had died. She thought of ghosts and grew nervous
before it.

"If my father sends me to work in that place--if he does--" she cried
with flaming eyes--"I shall feel that I am disgraced. I cannot hold
my head up again. Then you need not be surprised at anything I do."

"It ain't registered that you're gwine there yet," and Mammy Maria
stroked her head. "But if you does--it won't make no difference whar
you are nor what you have to do, you'll always be a Conway an' a
lady."

An hour afterwards, dressed as only Mammy Maria could dress her,
Helen had walked out again to the rock und