'You're going, are you?' he said. 'Then I whistle you off my fingers!'

An attempt to speak was made by my father in the doorway. He bowed wide
of the company, like a blind man. I led him out.

Dimness of sight spared me from seeing certain figures, which were at the
toll-bar of the pier, on the way to quit our shores. What I heard was
not of a character to give me faith in the sanity of the companion I had
chosen. He murmured it at first to himself:

'Waddy shall have her monument!'

My patience was not proof against the repetition of it aloud to me. Had
I been gentler I might have known that his nature was compelled to look
forward to something, and he discerned nothing in the future, save the
task of raising a memorial to a faithful servant.




CHAPTER LIII

THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING

My grandfather lived eight months after a scene that had afforded him
high gratification at the heaviest cost a plain man can pay for his
pleasures: it killed him.

My father's supple nature helped him to survive it in apparently
unimpeded health, so that the world might well suppose him unconquerable,