"Of course you know best, sir," said young Jacob, gently; "but would it be well to be precipitate? It is possible that you may feel differently some time----" "There is no 'some time' for me!" broke in the old man, gripping the chair-arms, fiercely; "my time's done--done, sir!" Then his voice broke and became plaintively kind. "There, there! Forgive me, Jacob, boy. But it's true, my boy, true. The world's done, for me; but there's a world ahead for you, my son, thank God! I'll be patient--I'll be patient. God has been good to me, and I haven't many years to wait, in the course of nature." He looked vacantly out of the window, trying to see the unforeseen with his mental sight. "While I'm here, Jacob, let the old man have his way. It's a whimsey; I doubt 'tis hardly rational. But I have no heart to go home. Let me learn to live my life here. 'Twill be easier." "But do you think it necessary to sell, sir? Could you not hold the house? Are you certain that you would like to have a stranger living there?" "I care not a pin who lives within those four walls now, sir!" cried the elder, with a momentary return of his vehemence. "It's no house to me now. Sell it, sir, sell it!--if there's any one will give money for it at a time like this. Bring every stick of furniture and every stitch of carpet up here; and let me have my way, Jacob--it won't be for long." He got up and went blindly out of the room, and his son heard him muttering, "Not for long--not for long, now," as he wandered about the house and went aimlessly into room after room. Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent parent, and none kinder ever lived. But we should hardly call him indulgent to-day. Good as he was to his boy, it had always been with the goodness of a superior. It was the way of his time. A half-century ago the child's position was equivocal. He lived by the grace of God and his parents, and their duty to him was rather a duty to society, born of an abstract morality. Love was given him, not as a right, but as an indulgence. And young Jacob Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety, was guiltily conscious of a secret thrill of pleasure--natural enough, poor boy!--in his sudden elevation to the full dignity of manhood, and his father's abdication of the headship of the house. A little later in the day, urged again by the old gentleman, he put on his hat and went to see Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was now, despite his objections to the pernicious institution of country-houses, a near neighbor of the Dolphs. He had yielded, not to fashion, but to yellow fever, and at the very first of the outbreak had bought a house on the outskirts of Greenwich Village, and had moved there in unseemly haste. He had also registered an unnecessarily profane oath that he would never again live within the city limits.