After the birth of Grace Rawn, their daughter, which occurred within the first year of their wedded life, Laura Rawn had something to interest her for the remainder of their days. Her horizon widened now immeasurably; indeed to the extent of giving her a world of her own wherein she could dwell apart quite comfortably; one in which her husband had no part. Simple and just in her way of thought, she accepted the truth that without married life, without her husband, this new world could not have been her own. Wherefore she credited him, and in her child, somewhat reverenced him. She was an old-fashioned wife. As to the child herself, she grew steadily and normally into young girlhood, in time into young womanhood, not given to much display, reserved of judgment as well as of speech, ofttimes sullen in mood, yet withal a step or so higher than her mother on the ladder of feminine charm. She had a clean, good family rearing, and a good grammar school education. At about the time her father came to be a man of middle age, Grace fell into her place in the clerical machine of the railway office where he worked; for very naturally, being an American girl of small means, she took up shorthand, and was licensed to do violence. At home she joined her mother in regard and attention for the master of the house. IV Here, then, was simply a good, middle-class American family, offering for some years little to attract the attention of those who dwelt about them. The head of this family, as he attained additional solidity of figure, grew even heavier of brow, trod with even more stateliness about his appointed duties. It was a privilege for the other clerks who labored near him to see such calm, such dignity. On the street John Rawn asked no pardons if he brushed against his fellow-man. In his business life, in his conduct upon the street-car, at the restaurant table, anywhere, he helped himself as though of right, and regarded the rights or preferences of others not at all. The community cream, the individual butter, he accumulated unto himself unsmilingly, as once he had bananas in his youth. Broad hints, deprecating smiles, annoyed protests, all were lost upon him. At forty-seven years of age his salary was but one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. That showed only the lack of wisdom of others, not unfitness in himself. Had this been Greece, or Rome, or mediæval England, he would have shown them who was entitled to the throne! Indeed, he would show them that yet. He often told his wife and daughter as much.