With that he left the room, conscious of a quickly gathered frown on his father's face at this tonal shadow of irony. The Norquay characteristic, as Mr. Kipling once mentioned of colonials, was one of straight-flung words and few. This was not the first time Rod had manifested a variation from family type in his mode of expressing himself. And as Rod strode down the hall to his own room he muttered to himself: "That's Grove. The governor never would have thought of such a rotten thing himself. Well, I may be an ass--but I'm not a damned cad." He snicked the lock on his own door, flung himself moodily into a chair by the window. He felt a queer mixture of boyish anger and a touch of forlornness,--as a colt that has had the run of wide pastures must feel when it is first haltered and thrust into a stall. CHAPTER III Rod had come down a hall that had, like everything about Hawk's Nest, a spacious air. It was high and broad. Dim light filtered into it through stained-glass windows, fell in mellow patches on carpet so thick and soft that he moved silent as an ancestral phantom,--which, however, was no part of the Norquay tradition. Active, resourceful men, and beautiful, gracious women had lived and moved and had their being there. Those comfortable homelike rooms had seen their joys and minor tragedies, births and deaths, quarrels and affections. Some of them had left various monuments to their credit, chiefly in the upbuilding and sustaining of the Norquay fortunes. But none, the remembered and the forgotten, had ever returned in the spirit. It was as if having lived their span they were content to let their descendants have undisturbed possession.