own again, his patrician face awry from
sheer torture, and then sat twisting his gaunt hands over his ragged,
quivering knee. "I see, it is good and kind of you, but--but-- I don't
see how I, myself, could possibly accept your offer."

"You have to, Joel," she retorted, still with her motherly smile. "You
can't refuse a thing that will give me and your wife and children so
much happiness."

"But I'd be on--on your son's bounty," Joel flashed from the very embers
of his humiliation.

"Absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Trott. "He says he owes you more than he ever
could repay. He says you cared for me when he deserted me, and that you
played the part of a man while he was a coward. But that is neither
here nor there. Joel, I have willed all my new possessions to you and
your wife and children. When I'm dead and gone you will have to have
them, anyway, so why not make me happy the remainder of my life?"

He was unable to formulate a logical reply, but beneath the revelation
she had made he sat limp and bruised as a flower drenched and beaten by
abnormal rain and wind.

"Does Tilly know all this?" he asked, timidly, a cowed expression in his
dull eyes.

"Yes, Joel, and she wants you to accept my plan. She will be happy when
you do, for your sake and for the sake of the children."

He got up. His tanned face above his clean but frayed collar looked like
the mask of some Indian chieftain thwarted in his last patriotic hope.
His poor, underfed horse, in reaching for the grass near his bitted
mouth, had drawn the reins beneath his hoofs and was about to break
them.

"Excuse me," Joel said, and he went to the animal and tied up the reins.
He came back. His face was still rigid, his lips were quivering.

"You wish it, you say," he faltered. "Tilly wants it, but how about your
son? Would he care for me to share in the benefits of his gifts to you?"

Mrs. Trott deliberated for an instant, then she said: "He is doing it
more for you, perhaps, than us, Joel. He declares he owes it to you.
I've told him how you have often stinted yourself to pay my bills. I
have told him, too, that but for you I'd have remained in the life he so
detested. Not one man in a thousand would have treated me as you have
done. You can't avoid it, Joel--we are all going to live in that fine
house and be comfortable and happy at last."

He bowed silently. That was his answer. He accepted her proposal as a
proud man might a shameful verdict of death. He went