t. "Yes, I
mean it!" he cried, his brain confused, his blood on fire. "I don't care
what you do. Cut me off! Make me go to work like any common laborer!
Crush out all the decency there is in me!"

The figure of the huge old man was like a storm-scarred statue. The
tragedy of his countenance filled his son and daughter with awe and
terror. Then, slowly, like a statue falling, he stiffly tilted forward,
crashed at full length face downward on the floor. He lay as he had
fallen, breathing heavily, hoarsely. And they, each tightly holding the
other's hand like two little children, stood pale and shuddering, unable
to move toward the stricken colossus.

CHAPTER V

THE WILL

When Hiram had so far improved that his period of isolation was obviously
within a few days of its end, Adelaide suggested to Arthur, somewhat
timidly, "Don't you think you ought to go to work at the mills?"

He frowned. It was bad enough to have the inward instinct to this, and to
fight it down anew each day as a temptation to weakness and cowardice.
That the traitor should get an ally in his sister--it was intolerable.
The frown deepened into a scowl.

But Del had been doing real thinking since she saw her father stricken
down, and she was beginning clearly to see his point of view as to
Arthur. That angry frown was discouraging, but she felt too strongly to
be quite daunted. "It might help father toward getting well," she urged,
"and make _such_ a difference--in _every_ way."

"No more hypocrisy. I was right; he was wrong," replied her brother. He
had questioned Dr. Schulze anxiously about his father's seizure; and
Schulze, who had taken a strong fancy to him and had wished to put him at
ease, declared that the attack must have begun at the mills, and would
probably have brought Hiram down before he could have reached home, had
he not been so powerful of body and of will. And Arthur, easily reassured
where he must be assured if he was to have peace of mind, now believed
that his outburst had had no part whatever in causing his father's
stroke. So he was all for firm stand against slavery. "If I yield an inch
now," he went on to Adelaide, "he'll never stop until he has made me his
slave. He has lorded it over those workingmen so long that the least
opposition puts him in a frenzy."

Adelaide gave over, for the time, the combat against a stubbornness which
was an inheritance from his father. "I've only made him more set by what
I've sai