Morty could not control his voice. So he turned and tripped down the steps and flitted away. As Morty disappeared, George Brotherton came roaring up the hill, but no word of what Van Dorn had said in the Amen Corner did Mr. Brotherton drop. He asked about Grant, inquired about Laura, and released a crashing laugh at some story of stuttering Kyle Perry trying to tell deaf John Kollander about the Venezuelan dispute. "Kyle," said George, "pronounces Venezuela like an atomizer!" Captain Morton rested from his loved employ, let the egg-beater of the hour languish, and permitted stock in his new Company to slump in a weary market while he camped on the Nesbit veranda during the day to greet and disperse such visitors as Mrs. Nesbit deemed of sufficiently small social consequence to receive the Captain's ministrations. At twilight the Captain greeted Laura coming from her home for her night watch, and with a rather elaborate scenario of amenities, told her how his Household Horse company was prospering, how his egg beater was going, and asked after Lila's health, omitting mention of the Judge with an easy nonchalance which struck terror to the woman's heart--terror, lest the Captain and through him all men should know of her trouble. But deeper than the terror in her heart at what the Captain might know and tell was the pain at the thing she knew herself--that the home which she loved was dead. However proudly it might stand before the world, for the passing hour or day or year, she knew, and the knowledge sickened her to her soul's death, that the home was doomed. She kept thinking of it as a tree, whose roots were cut; a tree whose leaves were still green, whose comeliness still pleased the eye but whose ugly, withered branches soon must stand out to affront the world. And sorrowing for the beauty that was doomed she went to her work. All night with her father she ministered to the tortured man, but in the morning she slipped away to her home again hoping her numb vain hope, through another weary journey of the sun. The third night found Grant Adams restless, wakeful, anxious to talk. The opiates had left him. She saw that he was fully himself, even though conscious of his tortured body. "Laura," he cried in a sick man's feeble voice, "I want to tell you something." "Not now, Grant," she returned quietly. "I'd rather hear it to-morrow." "No," he returned stubbornly, "I want to tell you now." He paused as if to catch his breath. "For I want you to know I'm the happiest man in the world." He set his teeth firmly. The muscles of his jaw worked, and he smiled up at her. He questioned her with his blue eyes, and after some assent had come into her face--or he thought it had, he went on: "There's a God in Israel, Laura--I know it way down in me and all through me."