ng more
profitable, won't there?"

"Yes, Peter. I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers,
though none that is its equal. I shall have a garden in one of them and
you shall have a garden next to mine."

"Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!" said Peter, with a perfectly
wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack
think once more that life was worth living.

Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack
returned to the house. When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose
"I give! I give!" he now understood in new depths, he thought:

"I know that you would not want to remain here another hour. You would
want to go with me."

And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought,
challengingly and affectionately:

"And you? You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie! No,
you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your
head! Yes, you would want to go with me, too!"

Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in
a cab. When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in
the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.'s return that evening:

"Father:

"The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story. It was
written after our talk. When I was going out to send it I saw John
Prather and you in the hall. You said that you knew nothing of him. I
overheard what passed between you and him. So I am going back to Little
Rivers. The only hope for me now is out there.

"I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine. I am taking
the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he
could help taking a Spanish galleon. That is all I ask or ever could
accept in the way of an inheritance.

"Jack."

XXXIV

"JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU--"

John Wingfield, Sr. had often made the boast that he never worried;
that he never took his business to bed with him. When his head touched
the pillow there was oblivion until he awoke refreshed to greet the
problems left over from yesterday. Such a mind must be a reliably
co-ordinated piece of machinery, with a pendulum in place of a heart. It
is overawing to average mortals who have not the temerity to say
"Nonsense!" to great egos. Yet the best adjusted clocks may have a lapse
in a powerful magnetic storm, and in an earthquake they might even be
tipped off the shelf, with their metal p