Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/34

Rh me. He forced me by his cruelty to awake a spirit I had not known I possessed, a savage that became a power. He had driven his daughter from the house and his young son to his grave before my time. Upon me, with whom he thought his grasp was strongest, he held a grip that made me throw my last breath into the struggle.

'I rose one day and faced him. He told me of my father, boasting he had displaced him in his inheritance, bragged that by his skill he had taken all, and that my father had gone a beggar from his own gates. He told me how he had returned one day to beg, to beg for bread to give his young wife, and then had come no more. How, later, my mother had come, a widow, to pray for help for her young son. How, when she was gone, he had bidden the son come, and he had come, to slave without hope of a reward like a beaten dog!

There," he added, "under your mother's picture you shall sit day in and day out, till I crush your heart and soul, who are my brother's son." I looked up at his words, and saw gazing down upon me the sad face of a young girl. She