The frown deepened into a scowl.

But Del had been doing real thinking since she saw her father stricken
down, and she was beginning clearly to see his point of view as to
Arthur. That angry frown was discouraging, but she felt too strongly to
be quite daunted. "It might help father toward getting well," she urged,
"and make _such_ a difference--in _every_ way."

"No more hypocrisy. I was right; he was wrong," replied her brother. He
had questioned Dr. Schulze anxiously about his father's seizure; and
Schulze, who had taken a strong fancy to him and had wished to put him at
ease, declared that the attack must have begun at the mills, and would
probably have brought Hiram down before he could have reached home, had
he not been so powerful of body and of will. And Arthur, easily reassured
where he must be assured if he was to have peace of mind, now believed
that his outburst had had no part whatever in causing his father's
stroke. So he was all for firm stand against slavery. "If I yield an inch
now," he went on to Adelaide, "he'll never stop until he has made me his
slave. He has lorded it over those workingmen so long that the least
opposition puts him in a frenzy."

Adelaide gave over, for the time, the combat against a stubbornness which
was an inheritance from his father. "I've only made him more set by what
I've said," thought she. "Now, he has committed himself. I ought not to
have been so tactless."

Long after Hiram got back in part the power of speech, he spoke only when
directly addressed, and then after a wait in which he seemed to have cast
about for the fewest possible words. After a full week of this emphasized
reticence, he said, "Where is Arthur?"