ightness and
finally at Matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed
on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength
and distinction.

"Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Craddock, and you, too, Father of Ann," said
Matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge
letter. "I have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk
over with you two gentlemen. Ann thought I came out to help her settle the
Bird family comfortably, and for a while I forgot and thought so too, but
now I'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though I must
confess the matter puzzles me not a little."

"The art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled;
let us repair to the library," said Uncle Cradd, thus placing the spare
ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of
criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over Paradise
Ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with
his food and drink, specially drink.

"I don't know why, but I'm scared to death now that I'm up against it,"
Matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from
his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and I followed the parental
twins down the hall and into the library.

"Will you rescue me, Ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in
my low chair and took a straight one beside father as Uncle Cradd stood
tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in
the huge rock chimney.

"Yes," I answered as I settled back in the little chair and took one
passionately delighted look around the old room, which I was seeing in the
broad light of day for the first time. I am glad that the old home which
had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to
me in half lights and a little at a time; I couldn't have stood the ecstasy
of it all at once. The room was the low-beamed old wonder that I had felt
it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness
of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the
books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the
chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like
one of Rembrandt's or Franz Hals' canvases. But in a few seconds I came
back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what Matthew Berry was
saying.