Wisely the man by the fire let him fight it out by himself and for an interval there was no sound in the quiet room save the crackle of the log and the great choking breaths of the boy by the table, whose head had fallen forward on his outstretched arms. Carl threw his cigar into the fire and rose. "Brace up, Dick!" he said at length. "We've been touching the high spots up here and you were strung to a tension that had to break." He crossed to Wherry and laid his hand heavily on the boy's heaving shoulder. "Now, Dick, I want you to listen to me. I'm going to see you through an agricultural college and you're not going to tell me I can't afford it. I know it already. But I've four thousand a year and that's so far off from what I need to live in my way--that a thousand or so one way or the other wouldn't make any more difference than a snowflake in hell. I owe you something anyway--God knows!--for supplying the model that sent you to perdition. If you hadn't paid me the ingenuous compliment of unremitting imitation, you'd have been a sight better off. . . . And you're going to marry the white little girl with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful, sweet forgiving decency of heart, and bring up a crowd of God-fearing youngsters, make over the old doctor's farm for him--and likely his life--and begin afresh. That's all I ask. Now to bed with you." Wherry wrung Carl's hand, and after a passionate, incoherent storm of gratitude stumbled blindly from the room. The old house grew very quiet. Presently to the crackle of the fire and the wild noise of the wind outside was added the soft and melancholy lilt of a flute. There was no mockery or impudence in the strain to-night. It was curiously of a piece with the creaking loneliness of the ancient farmhouse and so soft at times that the clash of the frozen branches against the house engulfed it utterly. Sombre, swayed by a surge of deep depression, the flutist lay back in his chair by the fire, piping moodily upon the friend he always carried in his pocket. To-morrow Dick would be off to the girl in Vermont-- The clock struck twelve. The rural world was wrapped in slumber. Above-stairs Dick was sleeping the sound, dreamless sleep of healthy weariness, and most likely dreaming of the girl by the brook. A cleansed body and a cleansed mind, thank God! So had he slept for nights while the inexorable master of his days, with no companion but his flute, drank and drank until dawn, climbing up to bed at cockcrow--sometimes drunk and morose, sometimes a grim and conscious master of the bottle.