e, no one and nothing had
ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans, once he had
determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing that any
plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His nature
unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence,
and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would
hold to that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who understood very well,
in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might
make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.

He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The
truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so
thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that
no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them,
especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his
feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange
to his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that
Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would
bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was
to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the
big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid
hands upon Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering;
Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her
husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.

It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and
Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line
of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the
grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over
the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the
carriages filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs
gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking
back as he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not
want to see. But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels
or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that every one had
gone. A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.

The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about
it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of the