to be."

"I'm going back with you." Al's voice was firm. "I'm going to take the
same train back. It's about time for that carriage, I guess."

"I haven't told you all my plans," George tried to go on, but Al cut him
off.

"You might as well quit that. I don't want any of your soapy talking. You
treat me like a child. I'm not a child. My mind's made up, and I'll show
you how long it can stay made up. You needn't talk to me. I don't care a
rap for what you're going to say."

A baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all the
world like a cornered rat, desperate and ready to fight. As George looked
at him he remembered back to their childhood, and it came to him that at
last was aroused in Al the same old stubborn strain that had enabled him,
as a child, to stand against all force and persuasion.

George abandoned hope. He had lost. This creature was not human. The
last fine instinct of the human had fled. It was a brute, sluggish and
stolid, impossible to move--just the raw stuff of life, combative,
rebellious, and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt in
himself the rising up of a similar brute. He became suddenly aware that
his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew the desire
to kill. And his reason, turned traitor at last, counselled that he should
kill, that it was the only thing left for him to do.

He was aroused by a servant calling to him through the trees that the
carriage was waiting. He answered. Then, looking straight before him, he