with each other, of besiegings and battles and captives and torments.  Legends there were of small kingdoms torn asunder, of the slaughter of their kings, the mad fightings of their barons, and the faith or unfaith of their serfs.  Here and there the eternal power revealed itself in some story of lawful or unlawful love—­for dame or damsel, royal lady, abbess, or high-born nun—­ending in the welding of two lives or in rapine, violence, and death.  There were annals of early England, and of marauders, monks, and Danes.  And, through all these, some thing, some man or woman, place, or strife linked by some tie with Mount Dunstan blood.  In past generations, it seemed plain, there had been certain of the line who had had pride in these records, and had sought and collected them; then had been born others who had not cared.  Sometimes the relations were inadequate, sometimes they wore an unauthentic air, but most of them seemed, even after the passing of centuries, human documents, and together built a marvellous great drama of life and power, wickedness and passion and daring deeds.

When the shameful scandal burst forth young Saltyre was seen by neither his father nor his brother.  Neither of them had any desire to see him; in fact, each detested the idea of confronting by any chance his hot, intolerant eyes.  “The Brat,” his father had called him in his childhood, “The Lout,” when he had grown big-limbed and clumsy.  Both he and Tenham were sick enough, without being called upon to contemplate “The Lout,” whose opinion, in any case, they preferred not to hear.

Saltyre, during the hideous days, shut himself up in the library.  He did not leave the house, even for exercise, until after the pair had fled.  His exercise he took in walking up and down from one end of the long room to another.  Devils were let loose in him.  When Penzance came to him, he saw their fury in his eyes, and heard it in the savagery of his laugh.

He kicked an ancient volume out of his way as he strode to and fro.

“There has been plenty of the blood of the beast in us in bygone times,” he said, “but it was not like this.  Savagery in savage days had its excuse.  This is the beast sunk into the gibbering, degenerate ape.”

Penzance came and spent hours of each day with him.  Part of his rage was the rage of a man, but he was a boy still, and the boyishness of his bitterly hurt youth was a thing to move to pity.  With young blood, and young pride, and young expectancy rising within him, he was at an hour when he should have felt himself standing upon the threshold of the world, gazing out at the splendid joys and promises and powerful deeds of it—­waiting only the fit moment to step forth and win his place.

“But we are done for,” he shouted once.  “We are done for.  And I am as much done for as they are.  Decent people won’t touch us.  That is where the last Mount Dunstan stands.”  And Penzance heard in his voice an absolute break.  He stopped and marched to the window at the end of the long room, and stood in dead stillness, staring out at the down-sweeping lines of heavy rain.