was still his lot, but there were good times coming. He saved
carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to college.

He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his
wife's garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply
scheming. They kept after him, offering much more than the land was
worth. Doyle began by being pugnacious, but in the end he took to
brooding.

"He'll get me yet," he would mutter, standing among the white phlox
of his little back garden. "He'll get me. He never quits."

Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building
condemned as unsafe, and Doyle gave in. Anthony built his house.
He put a brick stable where the garden had been, and the night
watchman for the property complained that a little man, with wild
eyes, often spent half the night standing across the street, quite
still, staring over. If Anthony gave Doyle a thought, it was that
progress and growth had their inevitable victims. But on the first
night of Anthony's occupancy of his new house Doyle shot himself
beside the stable, where a few stalks of white phlox had survived
the building operations.

It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stable-boy's story of
hearing the dying man curse Anthony and all his works. But
nevertheless the story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread.
Anthony heard it, and forgot it. But two days later he was dragged
from his carriage by young Jim Doyle, returned for the older Doyle's
funeral, and beaten insensible with the stick of his own carriage
whip.