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 drawer; suddenly he kicked the drawer shut and with his hands upon the desk, he pushed himself up to his feet. He was still a towering man in spite of the slight stoop which took more than an inch from the stature which had distinguished the days of his great vigor; he had never taken on flesh, and now his muscles were so firm that in limb he might have been twenty years younger than he was; and his big hand was steady as he raised it and brandished it at his granddaughter.

"Your father believed he was so smart—so smart," he gloated over her; and she knew, even before he reached the next words, that he had gone far back of immediate matters to the causes of antagonism long ago. "He carried off my daughter and thought he could win against me! He sided with John—John," he repeated the name of his brother violently. "Well, it did look like good business then. John seemed to have stronger hold on the property than I had. But your father forgot about longevity. John was under the sod before he was seventy. Your father forgot about my sons, too. John had Oliver—damn weakling; so he's under the sod, too; his wife's below the waves; and everything they had's in court. But it's coming to me! It's got to come to me!" he repeated, snapping off each word short and flailing with his arm for emphasis. "And you got to come to me if you want anything; everything, everybody's got to come to me! For I'm alive and they're all dead! To live—just to keep breath in you, that's something. John didn't think of that. Couldn't see why I'd care about living—up here. But I'm living; he's under the sod. No doctors put blood-pressure machines on me. I've got everything now; or I'm going to get it—everything they had and everything they thought they