boyish look sprang back to Lusk's face. He drew a long breath. "Why,
then I _will_," he said. "I--I'm sorry if I hurt you. Heaven knows I
didn't want to!"

He grasped the other's hand with a man's heartiness and went up the road
with a swinging stride; and Valiant stood watching him go, with his
hands tight-clenched at his side.

* * * * *

A little later Valiant climbed the sloping driveway of Damory Court. It
seemed to stare at him from a thousand reproachful eyes. The bachelor
red squirrel from his tree-crotch looked down at him askance. The
redbirds, flashing through the hedges, fluttered disconsolately.
Fire-Cracker, the peacock, was shrieking from the upper lawn and the
strident discord seemed to mock his mood.

The great house had become home to him; he told himself that he
would make no other. The few things he had brought--his books and
trophies--had grown to be a part of it, and they should remain. The ax
should not be laid to the walnut grove. As his father had done, he would
leave behind him the life he had lived there, and the old Court should
be once more closed and deserted. Uncle Jefferson and Aunt Daphne might
live on in the cabin back of the kitchens. There was pasturage for the
horse and the cows and for old Sukey, and some acres had already been
cleared for planting. And there would be the swans, the ducks and
chickens, the peafowl and the fish.

A letter had come to him that morning. The Corporation had resumed
business with credit unimpaired. Public opinion was more than friendly
now. A place waited for him there, and one of added honor, in a concern
that had rigorously cleansed itself and already looked forward to a new
career of prosperity. But he thought of this now with no thrill. The old
life no longer called. There were still wide unpeopled spaces somewhere
where a man's hand and brain were no less needed, and there was work
there that would help him to bear, if not forget.

He paced up and down the porch under the great gray columns, his steps
spiritless and lagging. The Virginia creeper, trailing over its end,
waved to and fro with a sound like a sigh. How long would it be before
the lawn was once more unkempt and draggled? Before burdock and thistle,
mullein and Spanish-needle would return to smother the clover? Before
Damory Court, on which he had spent such loving labor, would lie
again as it lay that afternoon when he had rattled thither on Uncle
Je