XXI. Portraits

XXII. Roberta Wakes Early

XXIII. Richard Has Waked Earlier

XXIV. The Pillars of Home

XXV. A Stout Little Cabin





CHAPTER I

THE CURTAIN RISES ON A HOME


None of it might ever have happened, if Richard Kendrick had gone into
the house of Mr. Robert Gray, on that first night, by the front door.
For, if he had made his first entrance by that front door, if he had
been admitted by the maidservant in proper fashion and conducted into
Judge Calvin Gray's presence in the library, if he had delivered his
message, from old Matthew Kendrick, his grandfather, and had come away
again, ushered out of that same front door, the chances are that he
never would have gone again. In which case there would have been no
story to tell.

It all came about--or so it seems--from its being a very rainy night in