an, still
with eyes averted.

"I have chosen," said the son brokenly; "or perhaps it would be truer to
say that there never has been any choice since the moment when I set my
foot in the path which has led me thus far on the way to hell. I can
despise myself utterly for the means I took to secure the evidence, but
that very lapse makes it all the more needful that I should atone as I
can."

David Blount rose and put his back to the fire.

"Son, you are a man among a thousand--among ten thousand," he said
quietly. "When it comes to a pure question of good, old-fashioned right
and wrong, you can buck up just like your old great-gran'pap, the judge,
did when he had to sentence one of his own sons for killing an Indian.
You haven't said it in so many words, so I'll say it for you: you've got
me, and maybe some others, right where you can shove us into the
penitentiary. That's about what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?"

"For God's sake, don't put it that way!" Blount protested. "I gave you
fair warning almost at the first. I've got to fight for the right as I
see it. If I don't, I shall be less than a man--less than your son.
Can't you see that it is breaking my heart?"

A silence electrically surcharged with possibilities settled down upon
the isolated room, with the stillness broken only by the crackling of
the fire and that other distant tapping as of tree-twigs on the roof. At
the end of the pause the senator took a forward step and put a hand on
his son's shoulder.

"I haven't one word to say, Evan, boy," he began slowly. "As you told me
that first day out here, son, it's your job to hew to the line and let
the chips fall where they may. You go ahead and do just what seems
right and law-abiding to you. I'd rather go to jail twice over than have
you do any different. Is that what you're wanting me to say?"

Blount dropped into a chair, as if the touch on his shoulder had crushed
him, and covered his face with his hands. It was hard--harder than even
his own prefigurings had forecast it. Fighting against the patent facts,
he had been cherishing a lingering hope that his father might be able to
brush away the cruel necessity at the last moment. But now the hope was
dead.

It was a long minute before he staggered to his feet and groped his way
to the door, leaving his father standing before the fire and once more
puffing absently at the long-stemmed pipe. When old Barnabas had helped
him into his coat and had