picions. It would have opened a breach between us that could
never be closed."

"Yes," said Blake, leaning forward on the table and speaking earnestly,
"your reluctance was very natural. I'm afraid of presuming too far,
but I can't understand how you could believe this thing of your only
son."

"It lies between my son and my nephew, Dick." There was emotion in the
Colonel's voice. "I had a great liking for your father, and I brought
you up. Then I took a keen pride in you; there were respects in which
I found you truer to our type than Bertram."

"You heaped favors on me," Blake replied. "That I bitterly
disappointed you has been my deepest shame; in fact, it's the one thing
that counts. For the rest, I can't regret the friends who turned their
backs on me; and poverty never troubled the Blakes."

"But the taint--the stain on your name!"

"I have the advantage of bearing it alone, and, to tell the truth, it
doesn't bother me much. That a man should go straight in the present
is all they ask in Canada, and homeless adventurers with no
possessions--the kind of comrades I've generally met--are charitable.
As a rule, it wouldn't become them to be fastidious. Anyway, sir, you
must see the absurdity of believing that Bertram could have failed in
his duty in the way the tale suggests."

"I once felt that strongly; the trouble is that the objection applies
with equal force to you. Do you deny the story this man told me?"

Blake felt that his task was hard. He had to convict himself, and he
must do so logically: Challoner was by no means a fool. As he nerved
himself to the effort he was conscious of a rather grim amusement.

"I think it would be better if I tried to show you how the attack was
made. Is the old set of Indian chessmen still in the drawer?"

"I believe so. It must be twenty years since they were taken out.
It's strange you should remember them."

A stirring of half-painful emotions troubled Blake. He loved the old
house and all that it contained and had a deep-seated pride in the
Challoner traditions. Now he must make the Colonel believe that he was
a degenerate scion of the honored stock and could have no part in them.

"I have forgotten nothing at Sandymere; but we must stick to the
subject." Crossing the floor he came back with the chessmen, which he
carefully arranged, setting up the white pawns in two separate ranks to
represent bodies of infantry, with the knights and bishops for