Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/211

205 and that his chin was cut in the same determined line as Tom Brighton's. Yet—no—there was something about his face that never could be quite like theirs.

They had finished at last, and Anthony Crawford, pushing back his chair, came abruptly out of the past into the present. He thrust his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out some legal-looking papers like those that Cousin Tom had locked away in the tin box.

"Here is the deed that you made out, Jasper, for the house and the land that you gave up to me. I put it in my pocket yesterday morning; it seems a year ago. The purpose I had then is something that I would rather forget, if I ever can. But this is what I do with it now."

He tore the heavy paper into pieces, smaller and smaller, as though he could not demolish completely enough the record of what he had demanded. The breeze from the garden sent the scraps fluttering over the table and across the rug, it carried the round, red seal along the tablecloth and dropped it into Janet's lap.

"Tom will have to make out some official papers," he said, "but I want you to understand this fully, that there among those fragments lies the end of this whole affair."

Cousin Jasper was about to speak, but Tom Brighton broke in ahead of him.

"It has turned out better than we could have