evi Dodd's head, poor thing that
it was, was safe for a while.

"Organize what you have left, and be quick about it," said Mr. Flint,
when the news had come, and they sat in the library planning a new
campaign in the face of this evident defection. There was no time to cry
over spilt milk or reinstated school-teachers. The messages flew far and
wide to the manufacturing towns to range their guilds into line for the
railroads. The seneschal wrote the messages, and sent the summons to the
sleek men of the cities, and let it be known that the coffers were full
and not too tightly sealed, that the faithful should not lack for the
sinews of war. Mr. Flint found time, too, to write some carefully worded
but nevertheless convincing articles for the Newcastle Guardian, very
damaging to certain commanders who had proved unfaithful.

"Flint," said Mr. Worthington, when they had worked far into the night,
"if Bass beats us, I'm a crippled man."

"And if you postpone the fight now that you have begun it? What then?"

The answer, Mr. Worthington knew, was the same either way. He did not
repeat it. He went to his bed, but not to sleep for many hours, and when
he came down to his breakfast in the morning, he was in no mood to read
the letter from Cambridge which Mrs. Holden had put on his plate. But he
did read it, with what anger and bitterness may be imagined. There was
the ultimatum,--respectful, even affectionate, but firm. "I know that
you will, in all probability, disinherit me as you say, and I tell you
honestly that I regret the necessity of quarrelling with you more than
I do the money. I do not pretend to say that I despise money, and I like
the things that it buys, but the woman I love is more to me than all
that you have."

Mr. Worthington laid the letter down, and there came irresistibly to his
mind something that his wife had said to him before she died, shortly
after they had moved into the mansion. "Dudley, how happy we used to be
together before we were rich!" Money had not been everything to Sarah
Worthington, either. But now no tender wave of feeling swept over him
as he recalled those words. He was thinking of what weapon he had to
prevent the marriage beyond that which was now useless--disinheritance.
He would disinherit Bob, and that very day. He would punish his son
to the utmost of his power for marrying the ward of Jethro Bass. He
wondered bitterly, in case a certain event occurred, whether he would
have