his face stricken as if with old age or sin or
-- but she could not make it out. When he
saw her he sank in a chair and covered his
face with his hands, and between the trembling
fingers she could see drops of perspiration on
his forehead.

"Hal!" she cried, "Hal, what is it?"

But for answer he threw his arms about the
little table and clung to it, and looked at her
with tortured eyes, in which she fancied she
saw a gleam of hate. She ran, screaming,
from the room, and her father came and went
up to him and laid his hands on the boy's
shoulders. And then a fearful thing hap-
pened. All the family saw it. There could
be no mistake. Hal's hands found their way
with frantic eagerness toward his father's
throat as if they would choke him, and the
look in his eyes was so like a madman's that
his father raised his fist and felled him as he
used to fell men years before in the college
fights, and then dragged him into the sitting-
room and wept over him.

By evening, however, Hal was all right, and
the family said it must have been a fever, --
perhaps from overstudy, -- at which Hal cov-
ertly smiled. But his father was still too