Part 9 (2/2)

”Mister Henry--” he began

”Well,” I said

”Soo hoe of manner, and the shadowy, musty silence around me threatened to shake the coolness I had attempted to assu sword I looked across at hio ho _has_ happened?” I asked

But Brutus only shook his head stupidly

”Very bad You go hoo to the devil,” I said, ”and leave that candle I won't burn down the house”

He ry,” said Brutus

”Shut the door,” I said, ”the draft is blowing the candle”

He pulled it to without another word, and I could hear hi with the lock

For the last ten years I doubt if anything had been changed in that room, except for the addition of three blankets which Brutus had evidently laid some hours before on the mildewed mattress of the carved four post bed

Myover it in yellowed faded tatters The charred wood of a fire that had been lighted when the rooreen clotted andirons The dampness of a seaside town had cracked and warped the furniture, and had turned the eheavy in the air

I sat quiet for a while, on the edge of my bed, alert for some sound outside, but in the hall it was very still Thensword That my father had overlooked it increased the resentment I bore him

Slowly I drew the blade and tested its perfect balance, and lie of the bed curtain Then I knotted it over ht Frohts of the Shelton shi+ps swaying in a freshening breeze, three together in port for the first time in ten years The sky had becoed into an inkythrough the branches of our elables Once below I heard ive an order, and the closing of a door

Gradually the thoughts which were racing through hts sorows intangible and vast, assumed a well-balanced relativity I s that evening which my father had overlooked We both were proud

He still see me with his cool half smile If his voice, pleasant, level and passionless, had broken the silence about e how little he had changed, and how much I had expected to see him altered I could still remember the last time The years between seeay The card tables had been out, and he had been playing, politely detached, seehts and yet alertly courteous I could see hiht hand neighbor, and the clink of the ers lightly through the coins And then, yes, Brutus had lighted o?

As I lay staring at the blackness ahead of hts returned to the room I had quitted Had she been about to thankme, and felt her hand drop froe, even cadence a sentence of his began running through , hilarious, in fact, if it were not for the lady in the case”

VII

So me slowly into consciousness Half awake, I wrenchedfor , and Brutus was standing bya bowl of chocolate between a thuer, that ile as a flower

”Eleven o'clock,” he said ”You sleep late”