THE master of Saltire Hall was a hard man, a man of steady nerve and unbending obstinacy. His brain was as a granite-plinthed banking-house, his soul a delicately designed machine for testing the current gold of the realm. Provided an argument bulked short by five grains in his estimation, he would toss it aside with an abrupt and hard-mouthed confidence that abhorred sentiment.

Walled within his materialism, he yet believed himself to be religious, his creed being a species of Mosaic law, practical and eminently rigid. Had fate destined him for an Annas, he would have crucified a Christ with quiet conscience—ay, even with zest. There was nothing spiritual about him in the higher sense; yet he passed as a good man, orthodox and respectable to the last button.

Hence it may be imagined that when Lord Gerald Gusset rode over to Saltire one morning, and proceeded to harangue the ex-tea-merchant on the iniquities of his son, John Strong gaped like a ravaged sepulchre, and discovered no relief in monosyllabic wrath.

Above and before all things the master of Saltire had been ambitious for his son. It was the ambition of a tyrant, a task-master who had conceived the erection of a social pyramid. He had thought to pinnacle his son on the summit of this ambition, to make of him a fashionable anachronism, a member of a New Nobility coroneted by commerce. It was the dream of a materialist, of a man who trusted in his gold.

John Strong’s wrath may be pictured when he beheld this excellent edifice crumbling before his eyes. Grim man that he was, he was overwhelmed for the instant, beaten to his knees, threatened as with social bankruptcy. His fibre, however, was not of the willow. With twisted branches he stood to the storm, and shook out anathemas at the cloud that had given it birth. He turned iconoclast against his own ambition, and prepared to tear down with his own hands the idol that had disgraced his pride. Lacking any elasticity of sentiment, he was the more incensed against Gabriel, his son.

The morning after his reunion with Joan Gildersedge, Gabriel took horse and rode for Saltire to see his father. He was ignorant as to Lord Gerald’s previous visit and the insurrection of John Strong’s ambitious prejudices. Gabriel was in a sanguine mood. Joan’s spirit had borne him above himself; her love like a golden banner beaconed him from the hills. Chivalry stirred in his blood. His poetic pessimism had fallen from him like the bonds of a witch damsel broken by the hand of a saint.

He rode through Saltire village with his chin high and his horse well in hand. The few sleepy folk idling about the street gaped at him with an apathetic curiosity. He passed James Marjoy rolling along in his gig, a red carnation in his button-hole and his stethoscope hanging from his pocket. The doctor gave him a curt nod and stared blankly into space. By the church the Rev. Jacob Mince eyed the horseman under the brim of his black hat, and turned from him with a pharisaical dignity. Gabriel tilted his chin more loftily towards the stars, put his shoulders back, touched his horse with the spurs.

Threading the park, a slumbering Arcady, he came, by the three sun-burnished fish-ponds, to the dusky edge of the Saltire garden. A wicket-gate closed a grass-path that delved into the green. Gabriel saw a streak of white amid the bushes and a hand that waved to him with quick appeal.

“Gabriel!”

The man dismounted, threw the reins over the fence, and turned to the gate. Judith stood there with her hand upon the latch, her bronze hair brilliant in the sun. She was in white, fair as a magnolia in bloom, her eyes preternaturally dark in her pale and wistful face.

“Gabriel, I must speak to you.”

He met her very calmly, with the strength gotten of his rehallowed love. There was no distrust upon her face, only a sorrowful foreboding, a fear for that which was to follow. The man saw that the cup of malice had been emptied at her feet.

“Are you also against me?” he asked her, sadly.

Their hands met. Gabriel went in and stood beside her under the laurels. He seemed taller than of yore, more deep of chest, keener about the eyes. Judith looked at him, a slight color suffusing her face.

“Gabriel, this is terrible.”

“Mere venom,” he said.

“I do not believe these lies,” she answered, with the calm of one whose convictions were carven out of white marble.

“For these words, dear, I thank you.”

“It is these women who have worked this web of slander.”

Brother and sister stood silent a moment, looking at each other like two trustful children.

“What of father?” he asked her, suddenly.

A shadow swept across her face, and her eyes darkened.

“He is reasonless,” she said—“mad, mad.”

“I must renew his sanity.”

“I doubt it—I doubt it.”

“Is he so ungenerous to his own son?”

“Ah, Gabriel, did I not warn you against prejudiced affections and ambitious love. Slander and shame have turned father into a Shylock. He will believe nothing, accept nothing.”

“I must face him,” he said to her, moving on amid the laurels.

“Be wise, weigh well your words.”

Judith followed at his heels. There was great sadness upon her face. Before the path upon the Saltire lawns, she touched Gabriel’s arm and beckoned him back within the shadows of the thicket.

“Gabriel,” she said.

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