the morning wind came in to lift the
long curtains and to stir the great bowl of flowers on the table.
Oliver, hungrily devouring chicken and rolls and bacon and sausages
and hot waffles with maple sirup, was saying little but was listening
earnestly to the jokes and laughter of Cousin Jasper. After a day and
night of anxiety, depression, struggle, and victory, he seemed
suddenly to have become a new man. They were talking, the three
elders, of their early adventures together, but Oliver noticed that
the reminiscences never traveled beyond a certain year, that their
stories would go forward to the time when they were nearly grown, and
then would slip back to their younger days again. Some black memory
was laid across the happy recollection of their friendship, cutting
off all that came after; yet they talked and laughed easily of the
bright, remote happiness that was common to them all. The boy noticed,
also, as they sat together, that Anthony was like the others in
certain ways, that his eyes could light with the same merriment as
Cousin Jasper's, and that his chin was cut in the same determined
line as Tom Brighton's. Yet--no--there was something about his face
that never could be quite like theirs.

They had finished at last, and Anthony Crawford, pushing back his
chair, came abruptly out of the past into the present. He thrust his
hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out some
legal-looking papers like those that Cousin Tom had locked away in the
tin box.

"Here is the deed that you made out, Jasper, for the house and the
land that you gave up to me. I put it in my pocket yesterday morning;
it seems a year ago. The purpose I had then is something that I would
rather forget, if I ever can. But this is what I do with it now."

He tore the heavy paper into pieces, smaller and smaller, as though he
could not demolish completely enough the record of what he had
demanded. The breeze from the garden sent the scraps fluttering over
the table and across the rug, it carried the round, red seal along the
tablecloth and dropped it into Janet's lap.

"Tom will have to make out some official papers," he said, "but I want
you to understand this fully, that there among those fragments lies
the end of this whole affair."

Cousin Jasper was about to speak, but Tom Brighton broke in ahead of
him.

"It has turned out better than we could have hoped, Anthony," he
began, "so that we can all agree to let bygones be by