IT was a delightfully cool and crisp morning for midsummer, and Doctor Dearing was on the lawn between his house and Galt’s, when he noticed that the railroad president had come out into his own grounds for a smoke. The two exchanged greetings through cordial signals, and Galt crossed over and joined his friend.

“What news from New York?” he asked, as he flicked the ashes from his cigar.

“They will be here to-morrow,” Dearing replied. “Madge has been homesick for fully two weeks; but Uncle Tom made her stay longer, hoping that she would become more interested in what was going on. They have had all sorts of attentions paid them, but he writes me that he has never been worried so much in his life over her. He says she enjoyed the first two weeks thoroughly, but lately she has been actually depressed. He tried everything imaginable, but home was what she wanted and would have.”

“And so they are coming?” Galt said, reflectively.

“Yes, they are on the way now. After all, what better could one ask for than a snug retreat like this in hot weather? Madge is fond of home. She doesn’t care for giddy social things among a lot of money-spending Yankees, and I admire her taste.”

“Yes, so do I,” Galt answered, and he smoked steadily, his eyes bent on the ground. .

“I have an unpleasant job on hand,” Dearing remarked. “I have delayed it several times, but I have decided to do it to-day and have it over with.”

“What is it?” Galt asked.

“It is a slight operation I have to perform on little Lionel.”

“Operation? Lionel?” Galt started, and then checked himself and stared blankly. “I didn’t know there was anything at all wrong with him.”

“Oh, it is only a slight and common thing with children,” Dearing explained. “Enlarged tonsils and adenoidal growth which must be removed. Outwardly the little chap is as sound as a dollar, and, so far, his wonderful strength has fought the thing off; but for a child so nervous as he is, and high strung and imaginative, it might, later on affect him seriously. Neglected cases have brought on permanent deafness and lung trouble. It is inherited, as a rule; you, yourself, had something of that sort, I think you told me.”

“Yes, yes,” Galt replied. Deep down within him something seemed to clutch his vitals. In the ear of his naked soul an accusing voice was sounding: “Inherited! Inherited!” The word rang out like a threat from the Infinite—from the vast mystery of life which had of late been so tenaciously closing around him. Even the pain Lionel was to undergo was the outcome of another’s sin.

“Oh, it is a very simple operation,” Dearing went on, “and in any ordinary case I shouldn’t give it a second thought; but, by George, I have become attached to that little chap. He is the pluckiest little man I ever knew. I had an exhibition of his grit one day that was ahead of anything I ever saw in a child. He had fallen, and his upper teeth had cut a deep gash in his tongue. They sent for me, and I saw that I’d have to take a stitch in it to close the ugly gap. It was a ticklish job, and I hardly saw how I could do it, for I didn’t want to use an anaesthetic. But I talked to him just as I would to a man, and he promised me he wouldn’t cry. He didn’t. I give you my word, old man, he didn’t whimper as the needle went through, and even while I was tying the thread; but I could see from his big, strained eyes that it hurt him like rips. A child with grit like that, Kenneth, is bound to make a stir in the world. I have noticed that you like him too, and I am glad you do. The truth is, darn you, you are taking my place! I’m jealous; he thinks you are a regular king. He is always talking about you.”

“When do you think you will do the—the operation?” Galt faltered, as he averted his shrinking glance from Dearing’s face.

“Why, I want to do it right off. It is like this: his mother knows it has to be done, and has agreed to leave it entirely to me; but she is very nervous over it. She has a vein of morbid superstition running through her. She fancies that some disaster is bound, sooner or later, to happen to him—in fact, as she has often put it to me, she hardly believes that a just God would allow such a sensitive and ambitious child to grow up to a full comprehension of his humiliation.

“I see—I see what you mean,” Galt managed to say, and his soul seemed to writhe anew as he stood trying to make his words sound casual.

“So I thought,” the doctor went on, “that I’d like, if possible, to get it over without her knowledge, or without her mother knowing of it. Nervous people standing around, half frightened out of their wits, at such a time, unsteady my hand and upset me generally. Now, as I have everything in readiness up-stairs, I think, when Lionel comes over this morning, as I’ve asked him to do, I’ll talk him into it. Young Doctor Beaman, my new assistant, is up-stairs sterilizing my instruments, and he will give the chloroform. You see, it would be a pleasant surprise and a relief to those doting women to suddenly find out that the thing they have made such a fuss about is over and no harm done.” Galt made no reply. He had seen a trim little figure darting across the lower end of the lawn, and saw a flash of golden tresses in the sunlight, and knew that Lionel was coming—and to what? Galt suppressed an inward groan. The unsuspecting child was bounding along, joyous and full of life, to the grim, inexplicable snare which had been set for him. Young as he was, he was to be asked to be firm and brave, that his little form might take on the semblance of death and submit to the knife, a thing at the thought of which even strong men had quailed. And what might, after all, be the as yet unrevealed outcome? One case in every ten thousand, at least, failed to survive the artificial sleep, owing to this or that overlooked internal defect. Would this child of malignant misfortune be that one?

Lionel drew near, sweeping the two men with merry eyes of welcome. There was an instant’s hesitation as to which to greet first, and then instinct seemed to swerve him toward Galt, his hand outstretched. With a queer throb of appreciation, the father took it and felt it pulsate in his clasp.

“Come here, Lionel, my boy,” Dearing said, with affected lightness of manner. “You remember what I said one day about those ugly lumps down there in your little throat which are going to get bigger and bigger, till after a while you can’t eat any jam and cake? You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“I remember.” Lionel passed his tapering hand over his white throat. “I can feel them when I swallow.”

“And that is why you have those bad dreams, and jump in your sleep, and think you are falling,” Dearing added, adroitly. “You know you promised to let me get them out.”

“Oh, not to-day!” the boy protested, throwing a wistful glance up at the unclouded sky. “I was going to build a really-really house out of the bricks at the barn. I have a stove-pipe for a smoke-stack. I’ll show you both. Come with me! Oh, it’s great!”

“Not to-day. Lionel, listen.” Dearing drew the boy close to him, and tenderly stroked back his hair from his fine brow. “Mamma, you know, is terribly nervous about it. Women are that way, aren’t they? Men and boys, like us, know better. She can hardly sleep at night for thinking about it—even a little thing like that. We can do it now, and I can run over and tell her you are sleeping like a kitten in my big bed up-stairs, and she and Granny will be so glad. It won’t hurt a bit, you know, for the medicine will make you sleep through it all.” A shadow of deep disappointment came into Lionel’s expressive eyes. The warm color of life in his face faded into tense gravity, and they saw him clasp his little hands and wring them undecidedly.

“And you think to-day is the best time?” he faltered, on the edge of refusal.

“The very best of all, Lionel,” Dearing said, gently. “You wouldn’t be afraid of me, would you?”

The child stared dumbly. To Galt’s accusing sense the world had never held a more desolate sentient being than this incipient repetition of himself. The child had proved that he knew no physical fear. To what, then, did he owe this evident clutch of horror? Could it be due to some psychic warning of approaching danger, or was the sensitive child telepathically governed by the morbid fears which, at that moment, were raging in the heart of his father?

“Come, that’s a good, nice boy!” Dearing urged. “I see you are going to be a brave little man.”

“I’m not afraid it will hurt,” Lionel faltered, “but I don’t like to be put to—to sleep.”

“But it must be so, my boy,” the doctor said. “Come on. Mamma will see us in a minute and smell a mouse.” For a moment yet the child stood undecided, his gaze alternately on the two faces before him. Suddenly, while they waited and his eyes were resting in strange appeal on Galt, he asked:

“Will you come, too?”

A shock as if from some unknown force went through the man addressed, but, seeing no alternative, he answered:

“If you wish it, yes, of course.”

“And you think I ought to—to do it?”

“Yes,” Galt nodded, his head rocking like that of an automaton. “The doctor knows best.”

“Well, then, I’ll go,” the boy sighed, with another wistful look over the lawn. “I’ll go.”

As they were entering the house, by some strange mandate of fate or instinct the boy again took his father’s hand, and Galt held it as they began to ascend the broad, walnut stairs. Argue as he would that the operation was only a most ordinary thing, to Galt’s morbid state of mind it assumed the shape of a tragedy staged and enacted by the very imps of darkness.

On the way up the boy tripped on the stair-carpeting and slipped and fell face downward. He was unhurt, but Galt raised him in his arms and bore him up the remainder of the steps into a big, light room off the corridor.

“Here we are, Doctor Beaman!” Dearing cheerily called out to a slender, beardless young man, who, with a towel in hand, was bending over some polished instruments on the bureau. “This is the little chap who never cries when he is hurt. He is a regular soldier, I tell you!”

“No, I’m not afraid,” the boy said, as he stood alone in the centre of the room; but still, as his father noted, there was a certain contradictory rigidity of his features which he had never remarked before.

Galt told himself that the child’s evident dread, vague as it was, was also an inheritance; for he recalled h............