To the world about us my father was nothing but a worthless inebriate, who had early abandoned himself to profligate courses, content to live upon the little fortune left him by his predecessors and to leave his children to run to seed as they listed in the stagnant atmosphere of vice. What the world did not know was the secret side of my father’s character--the wild, fierce imagination of the man; the creative spirit of his healthier moods and the passionate reverence of beauty which was as habitual to him as the craze for strong waters. He exercised a despotic influence over us, and we subscribed admiringly to his rule with the snarling submissiveness of young tiger cubs. I think the fragmentary divinity that nests in odd, neglected corners of each and every frame of life, took some recognition of a higher type from which it had inherited. Mentally, at his best, my father was as much above us as, by some cantrip of fate, he was superior to the sullen, plodding stock of which he was born. Three days out of the week he was drunk; vision-haunted, almost unapproachable; and this had been so from time that was immemorial to us. The period of compulsory education had not yet agitated the community at large, and our intellects he permitted to run to grass with our bodies. On our pursuits, pastoral, urban, and always mischievous if occasion offered, he put no restraint whatever, yet encouraged a sort of half-savage clannishness among us that held the mill for fortress and the world for besiegers. Perhaps it was not until I was rising 18 that any speculation as to the raison d’être of our manner of life began to stir in my brain. My eldest brother, Jason, was then a tall, handsome fellow of 19, with a crisp devil in his corn-colored hair and a silent one in his eyes, that were shot with changing blue. Modred, the youngest, some eighteen months my junior, was a contrast to Jason in every way. He was a heavy, pasty boy, with an aggravating droop in his lids and a large unspeculative face. He was entirely self-contained, armored against satire and unmoved of the spirit of tears. A sounding smack on the cheek, delivered in the one-sided heat of argument, brought his face, like a stolid phantasm, projected toward the striker’s in a wooden impassivity that was infinitely more maddening than abuse. It showed no more resentment than a battered Aunt Sally’s, but rather assumed a mockery of curiosity as to the bullying methods of the strong against the weak. Speaking of him, I have no object but to present a portrait, unprejudiced alike of regard or disfavor. This, I entreat, may be borne in mind.