This was all the information Paul could get, and he left the hotel half glad, half sorry that Jack had come, and determining to find him the next morning, and if his mother were willing, take him to the Ralston House until after the wedding. The house was full of guests, but Mrs. Ralston expressed her readiness to receive Jack if Paul would share his sleeping room with him. “I’ll do it,” Paul said. “It is his getting drunk Clarice dreads so much, and I think I can keep him sober. I’ll try it, any way. He is Clarice’s brother and is soon to be mine.” Immediately after breakfast the next morning he started for the hotel to find Jack. He did not see him at first, and inquired for him at the office. “Haven’t seen him,” was the answer of the clerk, and Paul went out again upon the piazza to look for him. Spying him at last, he hastened to him, and with a cheery “Good morning, Jack. I’ve hunted everywhere for you. How are you, old fellow,” held out his hand. It was a peculiarity of Jack that when angry he kept brooding over the fancied injury and nursing his wrath, which was augmented by every trifle. The fact that no one recognized him added fuel to the fire within him. The clear brandy he had taken was doing its work, and when Paul came upon him his temper had reached the boiling point of unreasonableness and lack of sense. To Paul’s “How are you?” he answered growlingly, “Much you care how I am, and I don’t know that it’s any of your business either.” “Why, Jack, what’s the matter? Can’t you speak civilly to me?” Paul said in much surprise. “No, I can’t, and I don’t wish to speak to you at all,” Jack replied. Paul saw the condition he was in and wanted to get him away. “Come, come,” he said soothingly. “Come home with me,” and he laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Let me alone,” Jack said fiercely, shaking the hand off and launching into a tirade of abuse, taunting Paul with having pirates and smugglers for his ancestors and still feeling so big that he didn’t want _him_,—Jack Percy,—a Virginian gentleman, to be present at his wedding. The crowd around them had increased to quite a ring,—some standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of the angry man. The sight of them made Jack worse, and, after finishing Paul, he took up his stepmother and Clarice, saying things of them which no sane man would ever say of women allied to him by ties of consanguinity. Paul had listened quietly while his father and grandfather and great-grandfather and himself were called thieves and cut-throats and robbers, but when Clarice became the subject of Jack’s vituperation he could bear it no longer. Usually the mildest, most forbearing of men, he had a temper when roused, and it was roused now. “Silence! You wretch, to speak so of your sister,” he said, raising his arm as if to strike, and taking a step forward.