"I'm rather anxious to know just how far you will go with it," Hale returned. "Suppose you change your mind when the going gets rough? I've got involved in this myself through connection by marriage." "What would you do if you were in my place?" Rod asked softly. "I don't know," Hale twisted uneasily in his seat. "I'd hate to be faced with such a decision, Rod. Your family has cut quite a figure in this country for a long time. Hate to see it peter out. Money _is_ essential. Without money," he made a gesture of dismissal. "I went over the whole thing with your father. Probably take your last dollar to see it through." "Are you thinking about Dorothy's share of the estate?" Rod asked his brother-in-law point-blank. Hale didn't resent the question. He answered frankly. "Well, yes and no. I wasn't a rich man to begin with and four years in the army didn't improve my finances. Still, I can get by comfortably on my profession. I didn't marry Dot for her income. It would be convenient to have it continue. But that is not what disturbs me. I don't like to think of the family fortune all shot to pieces, the old place up the coast passing into the hands of some damned profiteer--some pot-bellied swab who made a barrel of money building useless ships or selling bacon to the government. The rallying point of the whole clan will be gone. You'll be like a feudal baron without a castle, without a single man-at-arms. "Still, you see my position, don't you?" Rod persisted. "Surely," Hale admitted. "I'm not dense--or unsympathetic. _Noblesse oblige_. Only it's a pity. People won't care one way or the other a year after it's over. Everybody's too busy whipping his own particular devil around the stump. When your wife has to wear cotton stockings and do her own cooking, the very people you're protecting will only think of you with contemptuous pity." "I would rather incur their contempt than my own," Rod answered that: the last had stung him a little. "Well, I'll keep in touch. So-long." He went home, back to the rented house which they kept on for convenience. Six weeks at Hawk's Nest had revived the old feeling of its being the only place he could ever truly regard as home. That fierce possessive pride rose stronger than ever in his breast when he walked about the grounds, when he stood among those massive trees rising in brown-trunked ranks over Big Dent, when he lay in his bed at night and looked drowsily up at the high, beamed ceiling. It was as permanent as the hills--or it should be made so. And it was his, his own, to keep and pass on to another generation of Norquays--if he could. If he could? There had never been a question of that nature to harass a Norquay since the cornerstone was levered into place in 1809. If he could!