winning boyishness which these men had not seen on his
face before.

"Mr. Rowlett," he made answer in a low and reverent voice, "I hain't got
no remembrance of my pappy, but I'd love ter think he favoured ye right
smart."

Slowly the low-pitched voice of the Nestor began to dominate the place,
cloudy with its pipe-smoke and redolent with the stale fumes of fires
long dead. Like some Hogarth picture against a sombre background the
ungainly figures of men stood out of shadow and melted into it: men
unkempt and tribal in their fierceness of aspect.

Old Jim made to blaze again before their eyes, with a rude and vigorous
eloquence, all the ruthless bane of the toll-taking years before the
truce. He stripped naked every specious claim of honour and courage with
which its votaries sought to hallow the vicious system of the vendetta.
He told in words of simple force how he and Caleb Harper had striven to
set up and maintain a sounder substitute, and how for the permanence of
that life-work they had prayed.

"Caleb an' me," he said at last, "we didn't never succeed without we put
by what we asked others ter forego. Yore wife's father was kilt most
foully--an' Caleb looked over hit. My own boy fell in like fashion, an'
my blood wasn't no tamer then thet in other veins--but yit I held my
hand. Ye comes ter us now, frettin' under ther sting of a wrong done ter
ye--an' I don't say yore wrath hain't righteous, but ye've done been
vouchsafed sich a chanst as God don't proffer ter many, an' God calls
fer sacrifices from them elected ter sarve him."

He paused there for a moment and passed his knotted hand over the
parchment-like skin of his gaunt temples, then he went on: "Isaac
offered up Jacob--or leastways he stud ready ter do hit. Ye calls on us
ter trust ye an' stand with ye, an' we calls on _you_ in turn fer a
pledge of faith. Fer God's sake, boy, be big enough ter bide yore time
twell ther Harpers an' Doanes hev done come outen this distemper of
passion. I tells ye ye kain't do no less an' hold yore self-esteem."

He paused, then came forward with his old hand extended and trembling in
a palsy of eagerness, and despite the turmoil of a few minutes before,
such a taut silence prevailed that the asthmatic rustiness of the old
man's breath was an audible wheezing through the room.

The young messenger had only to lift his hand then and grasp that
outheld one--and peace would have been established--yet his one free arm
see