by the
kitchen stove trying to make up some kind of prayer to comfort the
other. Fourteen years of it, Doc--her and me, and her so patient, so
forbearing--Doc--you're a smart man--tell me, Doc, how did Tom Van Dorn
get around to actually doing it? What say?"

The Doctor waved his folded paper in an impatient gesture at the
Captain.

"We are all products of our yesterdays, Ezry; we are what we were, and
we will be what we were. Man is queer. Sometimes out of the depth of him
a god rises--sometimes it's a beast. I've sat by the bed and seen life
gasp into being; I've stood in the ranks and fought with men as you
have, and have seen them fight and then again have seen them turn tail
like cowards. I have sat by the bed and seen life sigh into the dust.
What is life--what is the God that quickens and directs us,--why and how
and whence?--Ezry Morton, man--I don't know. And as for Tom--into that
roaring hell of lust and lying and cheap parching pride where he is
plunging--why, Ezry, I could almost cry for the fool; the damned
beforehand fool!"

As the Doctor went whistling homeward through the storm that winter
night he wondered how many more months the black spell of grief and
despair would cover his daughter. Five months had passed since that
summer day when her home had fallen. He knew how tragic her struggle was
to fit herself into her new environment. She was dwelling, but not
living in the Nesbit home. It was the Nesbit home; a kindly abode, but
not her home. Her home was gone. The severed roots of her life kept
stirring in her memory--in her heart, and outwardly, her spirit showed a
withered and unhappy being, trying to rebuild life, to readjust itself
after the shock that all but kills. The Doctor realized what an agony
the new growth was bringing, and that night, stirred somewhat to somber
meditation by Captain Morton's reflections, the Doctor's tune was a
doleful little tune as he whistled into the wind. Excepting Kenyon
Adams, who still came daily bringing his violin and was rapidly learning
all that she knew of the theory of music, Laura Van Dorn had no interest
in life outside of her family. When the Adamses came to dinner as
frequently they came--Laura seemed to feel no constraint with them.
Grant had even made her laugh with stories of Dick Bowman's struggles to
be a red card socialist, and to vote the straight socialist ticket and
still keep in ward politics in which he had been a local heeler for
nearly