ing in the way."

Eli admitted: "If you mean you don't see anything in it to make all this
hurrah about, I'm with you. It don't look half finished. I don't like that
slap-dash style."

She was in a frenzy at their denseness. "Who did it look like?" she
challenged them.

"Why, like Uncle Grid, of course. Who else?"

"Yes, yes," she cried; "who else? Who else?"

They looked at each other, afraid that she was crazed, and spoke more
gently: "Why, I don't know, I'm sure, who else. Like Grandfather Gridley,
of course; but then Uncle Grid always did look like his father."

At this she quite definitely put it out of their power to leave her by
fainting away.

They carried her home and laid her on her own bed, where one of them
stayed to attend her while the other went back to rescue their deserted
baggage. As the door closed behind him the old woman came to herself. "Oh,
Stephen," she moaned, "I wish it had killed me, the way it did your
uncle."

"What _is_ the matter?" asked her great-nephew wonderingly. "What do you
think killed him?"

"That awful, awful picture! I know it now as plain as if I'd been there.
He hadn't seen it all the time he was sitting for it, though he'd already
put in his will that he wanted the college to have it, and when he did see
it--" she turned on the merchant with a sudden fury: "How _dare_ you say
those are your uncle's eyes!"

He put his hand soothingly on hers. "Now, now, Aunt 'Melia, maybe the
expression isn't just right, but the color is _fine_... just that
jet-black his were ... and the artist has got in exact that funny stiff
way uncle's hair stood up over his forehead."

The old woman fixed outraged eyes upon him. "Color!" she said. "And hair!
Oh, Lord, help me!"

She sat up on the bed, clutching her nephew's hand, and began to talk
rapidly. When, a half-hour later, the other brother returned, neither of
them heard him enter the house. It was only when he called at the foot of
the stairs that they both started and Stephen ran down to join him.

"You'll see the president ... you'll fix it?" the old woman cried after
him.

"I'll see, Aunt 'Melia," he answered pacifyingly, as he drew his brother
out of doors. He looked quite pale and moved, and drew a long breath
before he could begin.

"Aunt Amelia's been telling me a lot of things I never knew, Eli. It seems
that ... say, did you ever hear that Grandfather Gridley, the Governor,
was such a bad lot?"

"Why, mother ne