I saw my father waver, and guessed this unwonted liberality on the part of the doctor was calculated to some end of his own. In an access of rage I seized the full bottle and spun it with all my might against the wooden wall of the room. It crashed into a thousand flying splinters, and the pungent liquor flooded the floor beneath. For an instant the doctor stood quite dumfounded, and went all the colors of the prism. Then he walked very gently to the door and turned on the threshold. “You were always an unlicked cub,” he said, softly, “but this transcends all your past pleasantries.” “I mean it too,” I said, still in a towering passion. “I intend it as a hint that you had best keep away from here. I’ve no cause to remember you with love, and from this time, understand, you’ve no claim of friendship upon this household.” “I will remember,” he said. “I always do. Perhaps I’ve another sort of claim, though. Who knows?” He nodded at me grimly once or twice, like an evil mandarin, and walked off, down the stairs. I looked at my father. He was sitting, his hands clasping the elbows of his chair, with a wild, lost look upon his face. “What have you done?” he whispered. “Renalt, what have you done? We are in that man’s power to ruin us at a word!” CHAPTER XXXI. ONE MYSTERY EXPLAINED. The explanation I had desired for the morrow I determined to bring about there and then. I went and stood above the old man and looked down upon him. “Dad,” I said, softly, “once before, if you remember, I came to you heart-full of the question that I am now going to put to you again. I was a boy then, and likely you did right in refusing me your confidence. Now I am a man, and, dad, a man whose soul has been badly wounded in its sore struggle with life.” He had drooped forward as I began, but at this he raised his head and looked me earnestly in the eyes. “I know, Renalt. It was I broke the bottle then, as you have now. You have taken the lead into your own hands. What is it you’d ask?” “Don’t you know, dad?” “Yes, I know. Give me a little time and perhaps some day I’ll tell you.” “Why not now, dad?” He seemed to muse a little space, with his brows gone into furrows of calculation. “Why not?” he muttered. “Why not?” Suddenly he leaned forward and said softly: “Has it ever concerned you to think what might be the source of your father’s income?” “I have thought of it, dad, many and many a time. It wasn’t for me to ask. I have tried to force myself to believe that it came from our grandfather.” “He was a just man, Renalt, and a hard. I married against his will and he never spoke to me afterward.” “But the mill----” “The mill he left to me, as it had been left to him. He would not, in his justice, deprive me of the means of living. ‘What my hands have wrought of this, his may do,’ he wrote. But all his little personal estate he willed elsewhere.” “And you never worked the mill?”