of the nobleness of his heart, the generosity of his impulses.  She had always been able to mold him, as she thought.  Could it be possible that he was human to her, inhuman to the rest of the world?  Then her mind, tortured by newly awakened doubts, ran back over the events leading to the rupture with the Spragues.  She groaned at the retrospect.  It was injustice that had displaced Jack in the command of the company.  It was injustice that had marked her father’s conduct in the Perley feud.

Grief is a logician of very direct methods.  Its clarifying processes work like light in darkness.  Kate saw the past in her father’s conduct with terrifying vividness.  She realized that it was her father’s harsh purpose that had arrayed Acredale against him.  It was his pride and arrogant obstinacy that had brought about the loss of all she loved.  The fates had immolated the helpless; were the fates preparing a still bitterer expiation?  Life had very little left for her now, but she resolved that she would no longer be isolated by her father’s enmities.  The great house had been gloomy enough for father and daughter during the last miserable months, but he still fled to her for comfort.  It was one evening when he came in, apparently in better spirits than he had shown since Wesley’s death, that she told him what had been filling her mind since Jack’s death.

“O father, I think I see that our lives have been unworthy, if not altogether wrong.  Surely such neighbors as ours could not all take sides against you, if you were in the right in all the feuds that have divided us as a family from the people of Acredale.”

Then, in an almost imploring tone of reproach, she retraced the harsh episodes in the father’s dealings with the Perleys, with the community, and, finally, the quarrel with the Spragues, involving in it the lives of Wesley and Jack.  Her voice softened into tremulousness.  She arose, and in her old pleading way pulled the shaggy head down on her breast, pressing her lips on the high, bare forehead.

“Dear father, all this is unchristian; you have in reality been waging war against women and children.  Jack was a mere boy, Richard is a boy.  I don’t go into other enmities, where you have used the enormous power of wealth to crush the helpless.  If you had not alienated the Spragues and encouraged Wesley in overbearing Jack, my brother would be alive to-day.  My sweetheart—­yes, Jack was dearer than all the world to me—­he would not be dead to-day.  Ah! father, father, what good comes of anger—­what joy of revenge?  You have brought about the death of these two boys.  Is it not time to look at life with a new heart—­with clear-seeing eyes?”