are deeply sunken, but with a
feverish brightness.

"Mr. Grandon, I thank you most kindly for your quick response. Sit down
here.--Now you can leave us, Denise. I shall want nothing but my
drops."

"I am afraid you are hardly able----"

"Mr. Grandon, when a man's life comes to be told off by days, he must
do his work quickly, not daring to count on any future. I had
hoped--but we must to business. Come nearer. Sit there in the light.
No, you are not much like your father, and yet totally unlike your
brother. I think I can trust you. I must, for there is nothing left,
nothing!"

"You can trust me," Floyd Grandon says, in a tone that at once
establishes confidence.

"And one could trust your father to the uttermost. If he had but
lived!"

"No one regrets that more bitterly than I, and I thank you for the
kindly praise."

"A good man, a just man. And now he has left all to you, and it is a
strange, tangled mass. I meant to help, but alas, I shall soon be
beyond help." And the brow knits itself in anxious lines, while the
eyes question with a vague fear.

"If you could explain a little of the trouble. I am no mechanic, and
yet I have dabbled into scientific matters. But you are too ill."

A spasm passes over his face, leaving it blue and pinched, and St.
Vincent makes a gasp for breath.

"No. I shall never be better. Do not be alarmed, that was only a
trifle. You have seen Wilmarth, and he has told you; but the thing is
_not_ a failure, it cannot be! There were some slight miscalculations
which I have remedied. If I could find some one to whom I could explain
my plans----"

"I know a man. I have had him at the factory and he would be glad to
see you. He does not quite understand, but he believes it can be made a
success. Wilmarth seems doubtful and strange in some ways----"

"He is working against me,--no need to tell me that! But why?" And the
eager eyes study Grandon painfully. "There is some plan in the man's
brain. He came to Canada. Do you know what for?"

Grandon looks up in surprise.

"I was amazed. The man may have a better heart or more faith than I
credit him with. He was so different in your father's time. It is as if
some project or temptation had seized him." Then, after a pause, "He
asked my daughter in marriage."

"I thought she was--a child," says Grandon, in amaze.

"So she is. In my country, Mr. Grandon, they manage their daughters
differently; not always better, perhaps, but they do