Ellsworth was more keenly distressed than his hearer imagined; when next he spoke his voice was unusually gentle. "It IS a disease, Dave, or worse, and there's no way of proving that you haven't inherited it. If there is the remotest possibility that you have--if you have the least cause to suspect--why, you couldn't marry and--bring children into the world, now could you? Ask yourself if you've shown any signs--?" "Oh, I know what you mean. You've always said I go crazy when I'm--angry. Well, that's true. But it's nothing more than a villainous temper. I'm all right again afterward." "I wasn't thinking so much of that. But are you sure it's altogether temper?" the judge insisted. "You don't merely lose control of yourself; you've told me more than once that you go completely out of your mind; that you see red and want to kill and--" "Don't you?" "I never felt the slightest desire to destroy, no matter how angry I chanced to be. I've always asserted that murderers, homicides, suicides, were irresponsible; that they were sick here." Ellsworth touched his forehead. "I can't see how any sane man can take his own or another's life, no matter what the provocation. But I'm not a doctor, and that's an extreme view, I know. Anyhow, you'll agree that if you have Frank Law's blood in your veins it won't do to marry." "I haven't got it," the younger man groaned, his gaze turned sullenly downward. "Even granting that I have, that's no sign I'd ever--run amuck the way he did." "You told me just now that you don't know your family history?" "Yes. What little I've heard isn't very pretty nor very much to the family's credit. They were a bad lot, I believe." "Frank Law had two brothers and a sister, had he not?" "Yes. One of my uncles was a tough hombre. I'm told he notched his gun pretty well." "He was about the worst man of his day. He was shot in Dodge City on one of his rampages." Dave raised shocked and curious eyes. "You think he was crazy?" "Most of those old-time gunmen would be so considered nowadays. Some unbelievable stories are told about that uncle of yours. The other one disappeared mysteriously." "I believe so. He just walked away from his wife and family and business one day and was never heard of again." Ellsworth seemed to consider this admission significant. "Now the sister, your aunt?" "I think she's somewhere in the East; I never saw her." "She is; she's an inmate of an institution the name and address of which I have here." Ellsworth thrust his finger into the loose pile of documents before him. Avoiding his caller's eyes he continued: "You can't very well ignore such a family history, Dave. I've never traced it back beyond the last generation, but you probably could if you tried." In a voice hardly his own, Dave articulated: "God! This is--hideous."