Poor Cub, with the first perfectly lucid utterance of his father all the old cringing dread had returned, and his manhood again struggled with the fear that he had believed dead. This, also, after five months of proving the stuff of which he was made by bitter, patient toil, until day by day the warring elements were adjusting, the jangling grew fainter, and at each hammer touch of experience the metal rang more true. If Adam Lawton could have realized this, and seen his boy with unbiassed clearness, the loss of money and life itself would have been nothing to the bitterness that would have come to him as the results of his arbitrary attitude. The Cub need not have trembled. Remember whatever Adam Lawton might, a law of life had been broken and their positions were reversed, the leader must be led, the dictator of another’s free-born will must be protected, gently dealt with, guarded from trouble, loved pitywise, but never would he square his shoulders to the world and give and take. Can worse irony of fate come to any man who has really lived? An hour after the electric bolt had riven the plane tree planted as a landmark by the first West, and by its mystic influence cleared Adam Lawton’s brain, the warm June moon, a line from full, was slowly pushed edgewise from between the clouds and rolled slantwise above Moosatuk, a giant coin of gold, fresh and articulate from the mint. Lucy Dean and Tom Brownell, coming out-of-doors the instant the storm abated, walked up and down the cobbled path, all oblivious of the puddles between the stones or of the dripping trees above. Brownell had meantime entirely forgotten how he came to be where he was, also his friends below on the river road, whose motive power he represented for the time being, or the fact that, as the only resting-place in Gilead for the homeless was a “Commercial Hotel” of small dimensions and still less visible cleanliness, it would be necessary for them either to sleep in the touring car or in Gordon. As the pair for the twentieth time reached the road end of the path and turned again into the deep, sweet-smelling shadows of the great box bushes, a buggy turned the corner from the cross-road and came to a halt by the side gate. A slender male figure in a light suit and cap, leaping therefrom, attracted their attention, and Brownell exclaimed, “Great Cæsar! I’ve forgotten those wretches down below and they’ve come for me! Now for it! right-about face, Lucy!” at the same time by a dexterous turn of the arm catching her about the waist; for Lucy, whose chief pride had always been facing the music, whether necessary or not, had started to bolt, and exhibited as charming a bit of struggling confusion as the heart of man could desire. The moonlight struck the man’s face as he came forward. “It’s only Charlie Ashton,” she said, freeing herself at once, her head raised to its defiant poise; “as he doesn’t know that I am here, it is his turn to be surprised!”