“You dog-gone old _thing_!” he cried, his shoulders heaving and his voice choked with the half-swallowed tears in his throat. “I _will_ hit you now!” He rose, making blind sweeps with both arms in the direction of Harlan, and, in a kind of anguish, gurgling out imprecations and epithets that shocked his family; but Mr. Oliphant caught the flailing hands, took the boy by the shoulders and impelled him from the room, going with him. A moment or two later the passionate voice ceased to be coherent; plaintive sounds were heard, growing fainter with increasing distance; and Mr. Oliphant, slightly flushed, returned to finish his dinner. “I sent him home,” he explained. “He’ll probably feel better, out in the dark alone.” “And may I inquire, Henry Oliphant,” said the old lady at the head of the table;—“is that all you intend to do about it?” “Well, I might talk to him after he cools off a little.” “Yes, I suppose that will be all!” Mrs. Savage returned with a short laugh, emphatically one of disapproval. “It’s a fine generation you modern people are raising. When I was fifteen I was supposed to be a woman, but my father whipped me for a slight expression of irreverence on Sunday.” “I’m sorry to hear it, ma’am,” her son-in-law said genially. “I’m not sorry it happened,” she informed him, not relaxing. “Such things were part of a discipline that made a strong people.” “Yes, ma’am; I’ve no doubt it’s to your generation we owe what the country is to-day.” “And it’s your generation that’s going to let it go to the dogs!” the old lady retorted sharply. “May I ask what you intend to do to protect Harlan when you go home and his brother attacks him?” But at this Oliphant laughed. “Dan won’t attack him. By the time we get home Dan will probably be in bed.” “Then he’ll attack Harlan to-morrow.” “No, he won’t, ma’am. I don’t say Dan won’t sleep on a damp pillow to-night, the way he was going on, but by to-morrow he’ll have forgotten all about it.” “He won’t,” she declared. “A child can’t have a passion like that, with its parents doing nothing to discipline it, and then just forget. Harlan only did his duty, but Dan will attack him again the first chance he gets. You’ll see!” Oliphant was content to let her have the last word—perhaps because he knew she would have it in any event—so he laughed again, placatively, and began to talk with his father-in-law of Mr. Blaine’s chances at the approaching national convention; while Mrs. Savage shook her gloomy, handsome head and made evident her strong opinion that the episode was anything but closed. There would always henceforth be hatred between the two brothers, she declared to her daughter, whom she succeeded in somewhat depressing.