The cold reserve that extended to the young man did not carry beyond him in relation to any other member of the household so far as James Brood was concerned. The unhappy boy, early in their acquaintance, came to realise that there was little in common between him and the man he called father. After a while the eager light died out of his own eyes and he no longer strove to encourage the intimate relations he had counted upon as a part of the recompense for so many years of separation and loneliness. It required but little effort on his part to meet his father's indifference with a coldness quite as pronounced. He had never known the meaning of filial love; he had been taught by word of mouth to love the man he had never seen, and he had learned as one learns astronomy--by calculation. He hated the two old men because his father loved them. In a measure, this condition may serve to show how far apart they stood from each other, James Brood and Frederic. Wanderlust and a certain feeling of unrest that went even deeper than the old habits kept James Brood away from his home many months out of the year. He was not an old man; in fact, he was under fifty, and possessed of the qualities that make for strength and virility even unto the age of fourscore years. While his old comrades, far up in the seventies, were content to sit by the fire in winter and in the shade in summer, he, not yet so old as they when their long stretch of intimacy began, was not resigned to the soft things of life. He was built of steel, and the steel within him called for the clash with flint. He loved the spark of fire that flashed in the contact. It was a harsh December night when the two old men sat guard over the message from the sea, and it was on a warm June day that they had said good-bye to him at the outset of his most recent flight. The patient butler, Jones, had made no less than four visits to the library since ten o'clock to awaken them and pack them off to bed. Each time he had been ordered away, once with the joint admonition to “mind his own business.” “But it is nearly midnight,” protested Jones irritably, with a glance at the almost empty decanter. “Jones,” said Danbury Dawes with great dignity and an eye that deceived him to such a degree that he could not for the life of him understand why Jones was attending them in pairs, “Jones, you ought to be in--hic--bed, damn you both of you. Wha' you mean, sir, by coming in--hic--here thish time o' night dis-disturbing----” “You infernal ingrate,” broke in Mr Riggs fiercely, “don't you dare to touch that bottle, sir! Let it alone!” “It's time you were in bed,” pronounced Jones, taking Mr Dawes by the arm. Mr Dawes sagged heavily in his chair and grinned triumphantly. He was a short, very fat old man.