d went away, then I say he would
not dare come back again."

That was the last. Very shortly he began to refuse to talk about the
thing at all. The act was completed. Like the creature of fable, it
had consumed itself. Out of that old man's consciousness it had
departed. Amazingly. Like a dream dreamed out.

Slowly at first, in a makeshift, piece-at-a-time, poor man's way,
Boaz commenced to rebuild his house. That "eyesore" vanished.

And slowly at first, like the miracle of a green shoot pressing out
from the dead earth, that priceless and unquenchable exuberance of
the man was seen returning. Unquenchable, after all.

THE LAST ROOM OF ALL

BY STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN

From _Harper's Monthly Magazine_

In those days all Italy was in turmoil and Lombardy lay covered with
blood and fire. The emperor, the second Frederick of Swabia, was out
to conquer once for all. His man Salinguerra held the town of Ferrara.
The Marquis Azzo, being driven forth, could slake his rage only on
such outlying castles as favoured the imperial cause.

Of these castles the Marquis Azzo himself sacked and burned many.
But against the castle of Grangioia, remote in the hills, he sent
his captain, Lapo Cercamorte.

This Lapo Cercamorte was nearly forty years old, a warrior from
boyhood, uncouth, barbaric, ferocious. One could think of no current
danger that he had not encountered, no horror that he had not
witnessed. His gaunt face was dull red, as if baked by the heat of
blazing towns. His coarse black hair had been thinned by the
friction of his helmet. His nose was broken, his arms and legs were
covered with scars, and under his chin ran a seam made by a woman who
had tried to cut off his head while he lay asleep. From this wound
Lapo Cercamorte's voice was husky and uncertain.

With a hundred men at his back he rode by night to Grangioia Castle.
As day was breaking, by a clever bit of stratagem he rushed the gate.

Then in that towering, thick-walled fortress, which had suddenly
become a trap, sounded the screaming of women, the boom of yielding
doors, the clang of steel on black staircases, the battlecries, wild
songs, and laughter of Lapo Cercamorte's soldiers.

He found the family at bay in their hall, the father and his three
sons naked except for the shirts of mail that they had hastily
slipped on. Behind these four huddled the Grangioia women and
children, for the most part pallid from fury rather than from fear,