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celyn--nothing tangible, nothing that he could answer or refute. At times he became morbid, believing he could read reproach in men's eyes, detect sarcasm in friendly voices. Then for months he would shun men, as he was doing now, living alone month after month in the great, silent house where his father and his grandfather's father had been born. Yet even here among the Sagamore Hills he had found it--that haunting hint that honor had been moulded to fit occasions when old Gordon dealt with his fellow-men. He glanced up again at the butcher-bird, and rose to his feet. The bird's cruel eyes regarded him steadily. "You wholesale murderer," thought Gordon, "I'll just give you a charge of shot." But before he could raise his gun, the shrike, to his amazement, burst into an exquisite song, sweet and pure as a thrush's melody, and, spreading its slaty wings, it sailed off through the sunshine. "That's a new trick to me," said Gordon, aloud, wondering to hear such music from the fierce feathered criminal. But he let it go for the sake of its song, and, lowering his gun again, he pushed into the underbrush. The yellow beech leaves illuminated the woods above and under foot; he smelled the scent of ripened foliage, he saw the purple gentians wistfully raising their buds which neither sun nor frost could ever unseal. In a glade where brambles covered a tiny stream, creeping through layers of jewel-weed and mint, the white setter in the lead swung suddenly west, quartered, wheeled, crept forward and stiffened to a point. Behind him his mate froze into a silvery statue. But Gordon walked on, gun under his arm, and the covey rose with a roar of heavy wings, driving blindly through the tangle deep into the dim wood's depths. Gordon was not in a killing mood that morning. When the puzzled dogs had come wagging in and had been quietly motioned to heel, Gordon stood still and looked around at the mottled tree-trunks glimmering above the underbrush. The first beechnuts had dropped; a few dainty sweet acorns lay under the white oaks. Somewhere above a squirrel scolded incessantly. As he was on the point of moving forward, stooping to avoid an ozier, something on the edge of the thicket caught his eye. It was a twig, freshly broken, hanging downward by a film of bark. After he had examined it he looked around cautiously, peering into the thicket until, a few yards to the right, he discovered another twig, freshly bro
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