“Only because my presence may embarrass you.” “That wahn't in the contract,” said the Honourable Hilary; “you've got a right to take any fool cases you've a mind to. Folks know pretty well I'm not mixed up in 'em.” Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in this matter. As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier. “And then,” he continued, “in taking, a course so obviously against your wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your table and sleeping in your house.” To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently. “I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,” he cried. “I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge. I believe my work is in this State.” The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return. “I knew you had this Meader business in mind,” he said. “I knew you had fanciful notions about--some things. Never told you I didn't want you here, did I?” “No,” said Austen, “but--” “Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?” “I hope so, Judge,” said Austen, who understood something of the feeling which underlay this brusqueness. That knowledge made matters all the harder for him. “It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway,” said the Honourable Hilary, “but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him. You'll never get a county jury to give as much.” “I did advise him to accept it,” answered Austen. “What's the matter with him?” the Honourable Hilary demanded. “Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like Meader is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom.” And Austen thought with a return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary Vane. Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father. “Life,” observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase from the 'Book of Arguments,' “is a survival of the fittest.” “How do you define 'the fittest?'” asked Austen. “Are they the men who have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money from their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may be at hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?”