raids on the pantry and complaints from the servants, were a vexation to
Frederick. The house had become a restaurant, a hotel, he sneered
bitterly to himself; and there were times when he was sorely tempted to
put his foot down and reassert the old ways. But somehow the ancient
sorcery of his masterful brother was too strong upon him; and at times
he gazed upon him with a sense almost of awe, groping to fathom the
alchemy of charm, baffled by the strange lights and fires in his
brother's eyes, and by the wisdom of far places and of wild nights and
days written in his face. What was it? What lordly vision had the other
glimpsed?--he, the irresponsible and careless one? Frederick remembered
a line of an old song--"Along the shining ways he came." Why did his
brother remind him of that line? Had he, who in boyhood had known no
law, who in manhood had exalted himself above law, in truth found the
shining ways?

There was an unfairness about it that perplexed Frederick, until he
found solace in dwelling upon the failure Tom had made of life. Then it
was, in quiet intervals, that he got some comfort and stiffened his own
pride by showing Tom over the estate.

"You have done well, Fred," Tom would say. "You have done very well."

He said it often, and often he drowsed in the big smooth-running
machine.

"Everything orderly and sanitary and spick and span--not a blade of
grass out of place," was Polly's comment. "How do you ever manage it? I
should not like to be a blade of grass on your land," she concluded,
with a little shivery shudder.