Helen laughed again to cover the misadventure of her unruly tongue, and Phil laughed, too, though he did not exactly know why. Henriette was taking another deliberate sip of coffee. They were not aware of the vicar's return until he stood behind Phil's chair. "Look again, cousin!" Helen bade him. He was of a mind not to, but could not control his curiosity. The vicar was holding against the frame beside the face of the ancestor a photograph of the statue in the square at Longfield. "Your father sent it to me," he explained. "Not a double, but a treble!" exclaimed Helen. "It's the way of the blood," continued the vicar. "It skips generations, but it's always there--early in the seventeenth century, late in the eighteenth, and now early in the twentieth." "But the one in the eighteenth was a wicked rebel, disloyal to our German king!" Helen put in again, yielding to temptation. "Old Thomas, there, would have disowned him." "Helen!" admonished her aunt. "It was only a family quarrel." "But I believe that old Thomas would have been on George Washington's right hand," said Helen. "He looks it." Meanwhile, Phil was looking at the three faces, so similar that he might well have been in doubt which was his own. If he were expected to rise and make a fitting speech it was beyond his sense of humour. "Help! help! Too much ancestor!" he cried out; and half rising he seized Helen's hands, pushing the mirror away at the same time that he held her at arms' length. "You began it!" She was flushing to the roots of her hair. How strong he was! How silly she had been! "No, the ancestor! Ancestors begin everything for everybody!" she retorted. "And if you will let go of me I will put the mirror away." "We all beg your pardon for embarrassing you. It was not a plot and we are all very interested," said the vicar, his eyes twinkling. The photograph of the Revolutionary hero which her uncle laid on the table Helen took up; and the change of subject so earnestly desired by every one she wrought in another impulse. "What do ancestors count," she said, "beside a piece of work like this! It's the best he ever did and there is not his equal in all this island--nowhere outside of France. It's power--the purity of line! Who wouldn't charge led by such a figure as that!" "Now, Helen, when you are through with your ecstasy shan't we go out on the lawn?" said her uncle, patting her hand. The force of her enthusiasm had something compelling which led Phil to look at the photograph over her shoulder as if it were something he had never seen; but upon her uncle's hint he saw a plain, dull face yielding assent and he was conscious of a vitality suddenly turned limp. Henriette took the photograph from her sister's hand.