right to take any fool cases you've a mind to. Folks know pretty well I'm
not mixed up in 'em."

Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
this matter. As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.

"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
table and sleeping in your house."

To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.

"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
he cried.

"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge. I believe my work is in this
State."

The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of
Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one
was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a
growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years
in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.

"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said. "I knew you had
fanciful notions about--some things. Never told you I didn't want you
here, did I?"

"No," said Austen, "but--"