“There!” Galt forced a laugh as he took the soft, pulsating little fingers into his. As flesh touched flesh a thrill as of new life throbbed and bounded through him, and again he had the yearning to clasp his son to his breast as a woman would have done. As it was, no lover could have felt the touch of the hand of his mistress with keener, more awed delight. At one time, in a talk with Bearing, Galt had argued that even parental love was merely a physical function, like hunger for food, but that had been before this perplexing awakening. They had reached the front steps of the great house. An impulse he could not have analyzed led Galt to think of lifting the boy from the ground to the floor of the veranda, and he held out his arms. The child Sprang into them; his little arm went round the man's neck, and thus the steps were ascended. Was it a lingering pressure of affection in Lionel's arm that kept Galt from lowering him to the carpet when they had entered the great hall? He was sure he would put him down as they entered the library, but again he refrained, for the magnitude and splendor of the room had actually startled the child. “Oh!” Lionel exclaimed, his eyes first on the great crystal chandelier, then on the gilt-framed pier-glass reaching from the floor to the ceiling. “Why, what is the matter?” Galt asked, holding him tighter. “I did not know it was so beautiful, so grand!” Lionel cried. “This room alone is as large as our whole house. Ah! is that the sword your father killed men with? And will you please let me see it? Could I hold it, just once?” “I am afraid it is too heavy for you,” Galt said, as he reached for the heavy sabre in its carved brass scabbard and took it down from a hook under his father's portrait. “It wasn't made for little hands like yours. You'd have to grow a lot before you could use it.” Lionel stood down on the floor as the sword was put into his hands. He made a valiant effort to flourish the unwieldy blade as he thrust and lunged at an imaginary enemy. “Boom! Boom!” he cried, his eyes flashing, “Boom! t-r-r-r boom!” “Oh, you've killed them--they are as dead as doornails!” Galt laughed, impulsively. “Now your men will have a pretty time picking all those corpses up in an ambulance.” “Is that your father?” the boy leaned on the sabre to ask, as he looked up at the portrait of the elder Galt. “Yes. Does he look like me?” Galt answered. “A little bit, maybe”--the child had his wise-looking head tilted to one side as he had seen his mother stand in criticising one of her pictures--“but I don't like it much. It is full of cracks, and so--dauby.” “'_Dauby_'? Where in the world could you have heard that word?” “Oh, my mother says it often when she doesn't like one of her pictures.” The child was now absorbed in the bronze dragon head supporting the ivory handle of the sword.