r's family--or his brother to him.

With years the wall of silence they had builded up between them turned
to ice and the ice to stone. They lived on the same street, but never
did Edward enter Captain Abner's bank, never did Captain Abner pass
Edward's house--always he crossed over to the opposite side. They
belonged to the same Veterans' Camp--indeed there was only the one for
them to belong to; they voted the same ticket--straight Democratic; and
in the same church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they worshiped the
same God by the same creed, the older brother being an elder and the
younger a plain member--and yet never crossed looks.

The town had come to accept this dumb and bitter feud as unchangeable
and eternal; in time people ceased even to wonder what its cause had
been, and in all the long years only one man had tried, before now, to
heal it up. When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young and ardent
clergyman, fresh from the Virginia theological school, came out to take
the vacant pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense of his holy
calling, thought it shameful that such a thing should be in the
congregation. He went to see Captain Tilghman about it. He never went
but that once. Afterward it came out that Captain Tilghman had
threatened to walk out of church and never darken its doors again if the
minister ever dared to mention his brother's name in his presence. So
the young minister sorrowed, but obeyed, for the captain was rich and a
generous giver to the church.

And he had grown richer with the years, and as he grew richer his
brother grew poorer--another man owned the drug store where Edward
Tilghman had failed. They had grown from young to middle-aged men and
from middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first the grace of youth
and then the solidness of maturity had gone out of them and the
gnarliness of age had come upon them; one was halt of step and the other
was dull of ear; and the town through half a century of schooling had
accustomed itself to the situation and took it as a matter of course. So
it was and so it always would be--a tragedy and a mystery. It had not
been of any use when the minister interfered and it was of no use now.
Judge Priest, with the gesture of a man who is beaten, dropped the fan
on the porch floor, went into his darkened sitting room, stretched
himself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa and called out to Jeff to
make him a mild toddy--one with plenty of ice in