"Not easily, but if I can produce a face which comes to me in my dreams, which haunts my waking hours, which is with me always, the face of one I have never seen, it must come to me as a mind picture; and if that picture is the feminine of my own, have I not reason to believe that it stands for the creative power from which I sprang? Such a picture as this." He drew a little curtain aside and on the wall shone the fair face of a woman; the face from the church sketch, but robbed of its terror, the counterpart of the little painting upstairs. The professor looked grave, but Edward gazed on it in awe. "Now a simple brain picture," he said, almost in a whisper; "draw me the face of John Morgan." The artist made not more than twenty strokes of the crayon upon the blackboard. "Such is John Morgan, as I last saw him," said Gerald; "a mere photograph; a brain picture!" Edward gazed from one to the other; from the picture to the artist astounded. The professor had put on his glasses; it was he who broke the silence. "That is Herr Abingdon," he said. Gerald smiled and said: "That is John Morgan." Without a word Edward left the room. Under an assumed name, deterred from open recognition by the sad facts of the son's birth, his father had watched over and cherished him. No wonder the letter had come back. Abingdon was dead! The front door was open. He plunged directly into the arms of Barksdale as he sought the open air. Barksdale was one of those men who seem to be without sentiment, because they have been trained by circumstances to look at facts from a business standpoint only. Yet the basis of his whole life was sentiment. In the difficulty that had arisen his quick mind grasped at once the situation. He knew Royson and was sure that he shielded himself behind some collateral fact, not behind the main truth. In the first place he was hardly in position to know anything of Morgan's history more than the general public would have known. In the second, he would not have dared to use it under any circumstances if those circumstances did not protect him. What were these? First there was Morgan's isolation; only one family could be said to be intimate with him, and they could not, on account of the younger Montjoy, act for Edward. The single controlling idea that thrust itself into Barksdale's mind was the proposition that Royson did not intend to fight. Then the position of the Montjoy family flashed upon him. The blow had been delivered to crush the colonel politically and upon a man who was his unselfish ally. Owing to the nature of the attack Col. Montjoy could ask no favors of Royson, and owing to the relationship, he could not proceed against him in Morgan's interest. He could neither act for nor advise, and in the absence of Col. Montjoy, who else could be found?