“Well enough to be paid for working at it,” grinned Rawley, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes from straying curiously around the room filled with ancient trophies of a soldier’s life half a century before. “Not much like your father! I’ll bet he couldn’t have told you the meaning of the words. Damned milksop. Bank clerk! Not a drop of King blood in his body--far as looks and actions went. Guess he thought gold grew on bushes, stamped with the date of the harvest!” “I remember him vaguely. He never seemed well or strong,” Rawley defended his dead father. “Never had the King make-up. Only weakling the Kings ever produced--and he had to be _my_ son! Take a look at that picture on the bureau. That’s what I mean by King blood. Johnny, give him the picture.” The Indian moved silently to a high chest of drawers against the farther wall and lifted from it an enlarged, framed photograph, evidently copied from an earlier crude effort of some pioneer in the art. He placed it reverently in Rawley’s hands and retreated to a respectful distance. “Taken before I started out with Moorehead’s expedition in ’59. Six feet two in my bare feet, and not an ounce of soft flesh in my body. Not a man in the company I couldn’t throw. Johnny could tell you.” A note of pride had crept into the old man’s voice. “I can see it, Grandfather. I--I’d give anything to have been with you in those days. Lord, what a physique!” The fierce old eyes sparkled. The bony fingers gripped the arms of the wheel chair like steel claws. “That’s the King blood. Give me two legs and I’d be a King yet, old as I am--instead of a hunk of meat in a wheel chair.” “It’s the spirit that counts, Grandfather,” Rawley observed hearteningly, his eyes still on the picture but lifting now to the old man’s face. “The picture’s like you yet.” The old man grunted doubtfully, his eyes fixed sharply upon Rawley’s face. His fingers drummed restlessly upon the arm of his chair, as if he were seeing in the young man his own care-free youth, and was yearning over it in secret. Indeed, as he stood there in the light of the old-fashioned lamp, Rawley King might have been mistaken for the original of the picture with the costume set fifty years ahead. “Johnny, get the box.” Grandfather King spoke without taking his eyes off Rawley. The old Indian slipped away. In a moment he returned with a square metal box which he placed on the old man’s knees. Rawley found himself wondering what his mother would say when he told her that Grandfather King had sent for him, was actually talking to him, giving him a glimpse of that sealed past of his. He watched his grandfather fit a key into the lock of the metal box.