At the same moment, Carnac in the garden of his old home beheld the river
too and the great expanse of country, saw the grey light of evening on
the distant hills, and listened to Fabian who condoled with him. When
Fabian had gone, Carnac sat down on a bench and thought over the whole
thing. Carnac had no quarrel with his fate. When in the old home on the
hill he had heard the will, it had surprised him, but it had not shocked
him. He had looked to be the discarded heir, and he knew it now without
rebellion. He had never tried to smooth the path to that financial
security which his father could give. Yet now that disaster had come,
there was a glimmer of remorse, of revolt, because there was some one
besides himself who might think he had thrown away his chances. He did
not know that over on the mountain-side, vituperating the memory of the
dead man, Junia was angry only for Carnac's sake.

With the black storm of sudden death roaring in his ears, he had a sense
of freedom, almost of licence. Nothing that had been his father's was
now his own, or his mother's, except the land and house on which they
were. All the great business John Grier had built up was gone into the
hands of the usurper, a young, bold, pestilent, powerful, vigorous man.
It seemed suddenly horrible that the timber-yards and the woods and the
offices, and the buildings of John Grier's commercial business were not
under his own direction, or that of his mother, or brother. They had
ceased to be factors in the equation; they were 'non est' in the
postmortem history of John Grier. How immense a nerve the old man had to
make such a will, which outraged every convention of social and family
life; which was, in effect, a proclamation that his son Carnac had no
place in John Grier's scheme of things, while John Grier's wife was
rewarded like some faithful old servant. Yet some newspapers had said he
was a man of goodwill, and had appreciation of talent, adding, however,