There was another change, too, in the brethren. Hitherto they had lived together at Canobie. On their return from the war they astonished Aura by separating. Osmun lived on at the big house. But Clive took his belongings to Rackrent Farm; and set up housekeeping there; attended by an old negro and his wife, who had worked for his father. He even transported thither the amateur laboratory wherewith he and Osmun had always delighted to putter; and he set it up in a vacant back room of the farmhouse. Aura was thrilled at these signs of discord in the hitherto inseparable brethren. Clive had been the only mortal to find good in Osmun and to care for his society. Now, apparently, there had been a break. But almost at once Aura found there had been no break. The twins were as devoted as ever, despite their decision to live two miles apart. They were back and forth, daily, at each other’s homes; and they wrought, side by side, with all their old zeal, in the laboratory. Osmun’s cantankerous soul did not seem to have undergone any purifying process from war experience and long illness. Within a month after he came back to Aura he proceeded to celebrate his return by raising the rents of the seven cottages he and Clive owned; and by a twenty per cent cut in the pay of the Canobie laborers. Aura is not feudal Europe. Nor had Osmun Creede any of the hereditary popularity or masterliness of a feudal baron. Wherefore the seven tenants prepared to walk out of their rent-raised homes. The Canobie laborers, to a man, went on strike. Aura applauded. Osmun sulked. Clive came to the rescue, as ever he had done when his brother’s actions had aroused ill-feeling. He rode over to Canobie and was closeted for three hours with Osmun. Servants, passing the library, heard and reported the hum of arguing voices. Then Clive came out and rode home. Next morning Osmun lowered the rents and restored wages to their old scale. As usual, the resultant popularity descended on Clive and not upon himself. It was a week afterward that Thaxton Vail chanced to meet Osmun at the Aura Country Club. Osmun stumped up to him, as Vail sat on the veranda rail waiting for Doris Lane to come to the tennis courts. “I was blackballed, yesterday, by the Stockbridge Hunt Club,” announced Creede, with no other salutation. “I’m sorry,” said Thaxton, politely. “I hear, on good authority, that it was you who blackballed me,” continued Osmun, his spectacled eyes glaring wrathfully on his neighbor. “And I’ve come to ask why you did it. In fact, I demand to know why.” “I’m disobedient, by nature,” said Thaxton, idly. “So if I had blackballed you, I’d probably refuse to obey your ‘demand.’ But as it happened, I didn’t blackball you. I wasn’t even at the Membership Committee’s meeting.” “I hear, on good authority, that _you_ blackballed me,” insisted Osmun, his glare abating not at all.