Angrily Hamilton shook the sagging shoulders until the sleeper's lids opened heavily and the lips voiced some incoherent thing. Then Paul attempted to turn his face away and go to sleep again. "So," exclaimed the elder as he dragged his brother to his feet and restored him to a semblance of consciousness, "so this is the way you waited for me?" Paul blinked owlishly through the stupidity of his condition, and upon his delicate features the unaccustomed and swollen flush dwelt in a disfiguring blot. He shook his head and informed thickly, "Jefferson Edwardes's dead." "I know that--and you're drunk." The musician stupidly nodded his assent to so incontrovertible a statement and as he gradually awoke to a fuller realization, he rose and made his way unsteadily to the piano. But his fingers were stiff and unresponsive, and after a brief effort he gave that up. Once more he looked up and an expression of deep terror spread over his face. Tears welled into his eyes and he wept for awhile in silence as Hamilton looked on. "Jeff'son Edwardes's dead," he reiterated with parrot-like singleness of idea. "Mary's heart's broke.... I'm drunk." One hand waved broadly in an oratorical gesture. After a moment he added in solemn afterthought, "Father's drunk, too." Hamilton ground his teeth. "I suppose," he said bitterly, "you regard the first two facts as justification for the others." Paul rose and through his condition something of his more normal self asserted itself. He laid his hands on his brother's shoulders. "Hamilton, I think my heart's broke, too. Mary's a sweet girl. I haven't slept f'r a long, long time--been worrying--an' tonight I--" "Never mind explaining." Out of the elder brother's voice the wrath had died. "That won't help now. Come, I'll put you to bed." As he turned away from Paul's bedroom a half-hour later the face of Hamilton Burton was not the face of the conqueror. In his own room he went to a window and looked out. He saw a star and some fancy identified it as the same star that had caught his eye that night when he came back to the farm-house and found his father ill. Once more it was not in the east riding toward the upper heavens, but in the west, setting beyond the Palisades of Jersey--soon to drop from view. For a breathing-space Hamilton Burton felt faint and uncertain, as one may feel in a dream which is half-wakefulness. Then he was conscious of his own voice speaking half-aloud: "Slivers Martin paid me ten for 'em an' I got 'em for seven--an' he had to go after 'em." The words had come involuntarily--as from another personality speaking with his tongue, and they startled him. With a fiercely impatient gesture he brushed his hand across his forehead and picked up from a table a new appreciation of the life and campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte. Yamuro slipped in with his cushioned tread and stood awaiting orders, and after a while the master whose attention refused to remain fixed even on Napoleon glanced up.