THE following Wednesday afternoon, when he had concluded his business at one of the larger wholesale houses in Atlanta, Nelson Floyd took a street-car for his uncle's residence. Reaching it, he was met at the door by the white woman who had admitted Pole Baker to the house on his visit to Atlanta. She explained that her master had only gone across the street to see a neighbor, and that he would be back at once. She led Floyd into the old-fashioned parlor and gave him one of the dilapidated, hair-cloth chairs, remaining in the room to put a few things to rights, and dusting the furniture with her apron. On either side of the mantel-piece hung a crude oil-portrait, in cracked and chipped gilt frames of very massive make. The one on the right was that of a dark-haired gentleman in the conventional dress of seventy-five years previous. The other was evidently his wife, a woman of no little beauty. They were doubtless family portraits, and Floyd regarded them with reverential interest. The servant saw him looking at them and remarked: “They are Mr. Floyd's mother and father, sir. The pictures were made a long time ago. Old Mr. Floyd was a very smart man in his day, and his wife was considered a great beauty and a belle, so I've heard folks say, though I'm sure I don't see how any woman could be popular with her hair fixed that bungly way. But Mr. Floyd is very proud of the pictures. He wouldn't sell them for any price. We thought the house was going to burn down one day when the kitchen-stove turned over, and he sprained his ankle climbing up in a chair to get them down.”

“They are my grandparents,” he told her.

“You don't say! Then you are Mr. Floyd's—”

“I'm his nephew. My name is Floyd—Nelson Floyd. I've never met my uncle.”

“Oh, I see!” The woman's brow was corrugated. “Mr. Floyd did have a brother who died young, but I don't think I ever heard him speak of him. But he don't talk much to anybody, and now—la me!—he's so worried over his business that he's as near crazy as any man I ever saw. You say you haven't ever seen him! Then you'd better not expect him to be very sociable. As I say, he's all upset over business. The way he's doing is the talk of the neighborhood. There, I heard the gate shut. I reckon that's him now.”

She went to one of the front windows and parted the curtains and looked out.

“Yes, that's him. I'll go and tell him you are here.”

Nelson heard the door open and close and then muffled voices, a gruff, masculine one, and that of the servant lowered persuasively. Heavy steps passed on down the hall, and then the woman came back.

“I told him you was here, sir,” she said. “He's gone to his room, but will be back in a minute. He's queer, sir; if you haven't seen him before you had as well be prepared for that. I heard Dr. Plympton say the other day that if he didn't stop worrying as he is that he'd have a stroke of paralysis.”

The woman retired and the visitor sat for several moments alone. Presently he heard the heavy-steps in the hall and Henry A. Floyd came in. He was very pale, his skin appearing almost ashen in color, and his eyes, under their heavy brows, had a restless, shifting expression. Nelson felt repelled in a way he could not account for. The old man failed to offer any greeting, and it was only the caller's extended hand that seemed to remind him of the courtesy due a stranger. Even then only the ends of his cold fingers touched those of the young man. A thrill of intense and disagreeable surprise passed over Nelson, for his uncle stood staring at him steadily, without uttering a word.

“Did your servant tell you who I am?” the young man ventured, in no little embarrassment.

“Yes, she told me,” old Floyd answered. “She told me.”

“From your stand-point, sir,” Nelson said, “perhaps I have little excuse for coming to see you without an intimation from you that such a visit would be welcome, but I confess I was so anxious to hear, something from you about my parents that I couldn't wait longer.”

“Huh, I see, I see!” exclaimed the old man, his glance on the floor.

“You may understand my eagerness more fully,” said Nelson, “when I tell you that you are the first and only blood relative I remember ever to have seen.”

The old man shrugged his bent shoulders, and Nelson was almost sure that he sneered, but no sound came from his tightly compressed lips.

The young man, in even greater embarrassment, looked at the portraits on the wall, and, for the lack of anything more appropriate to say, remarked: “Your servant tells me that these are my grandparents—your father and mother.”

“Yes, they are my parents,” the old man said, deep down in his throat. Then all of a sudden his eyes began to flash angrily. “That old hussy's been talking behind my back, has she? I'll teach her what her place is in my house, if—”

“Oh, she only answered a question or two of mine,” said Nelson, pacifically. “I told her you were my uncle and for that reason I was interested in family portraits.”

“Your uncle!” That was all the reply old Floyd made.

Nelson stared at him in deep perplexity for a moment, then he said: “I hope I am not on the wrong track, sir. A friend of mine—a rough mountaineer, it's true, but a sterling fellow—called here some time ago, and he came back and told me that you said—”

“He came here like the spy that he was,” snorted the old man. “He came here to my house pretending to want to rent land, and in that way got into my confidence and had me talk about family matters; but he didn't want to rent land. When he failed to come back my suspicions were roused and I made inquiries. I found out that he was the sharpest, keenest man among mountain revenue detectives, and that he had no idea of leaving his present location. Now I'd simply like to know what you and he are after. I haven't got anything for you—not a dollar in the world, nor any property that isn't mortgaged up to the hilt. Why did you send a man of that kind to me?”

“You actually astound me, sir,” Nelson said. “I hardly know what to say.”

“I reckon you don't—now that I hurl the unexpected truth into your teeth. You didn't think I'd be sharp enough to inquire about that fellow Baker, did you? You thought a man living here in a city as big as this would let a green country lout like that get him in a trap. Huh! But I wasn't a fool, sir. You thought you were getting facts from me through him, but you were not, by a long shot. I wasn't going to tell a stranger like that delicate family matters. God knows your father's conduct was disgraceful enough without my unfolding his life to a coarse greenhorn so long after his death. You know the reputation my brother Charles had, don't you?”

“Not till it came from you, sir,” said Nelson, coldly. “Baker told me you said he was a little wild, that he drank—”

“My father kicked him out of our home, I tell you,” the old man snapped. “He told him never to darken his door again, after the way he lived before the war and during it. It completely broke that woman's heart.” Old Floyd pointed a' trembling finger at his mother's portrait. “I don't understand why you—how you can come here as you do, calling me your uncle as if you had a right to do so.”

“Right to do so?—stop!” Nelson took him up sharply. “What do you mean? I've the right to ask that, sir, anyway.”

“Oh, you know what I mean, I reckon. That man Baker intimated that you knew all about your family history. You know that your mother and my poor, deluded brother were never married, that they—”

“Not married!” Nelson Floyd shrank as if he had been struck in the face. “For God's sake don't say that! I can stand anything but that.”

“I won't ask you to believe me without ample proof,” old Floyd answered, harshly. “Wait here a minute.”

Nelson sank into a chair, and pale and trembling, and with a heart that seemed dead within him, he watched the old man move slowly from the room. Old Floyd returned presently. An expression that seemed born of grim, palpitating satisfaction lay on his colorless face; a triumphant light blazed in his sullen eyes. He held some books and a package of letters in his hands.

“Here are your father's letters to my parents,” he began. “The letters will tell the whole story. They bear his signature. If you doubt their authenticity—if you think the name is forged, you can compare it to all the specimens of his writing in these old school-books of his. This is a diary he kept in college. You can see from its character how his life was tending. The letters are later, after he met your mother—a French girl—in New Orleans.”

For a moment Nelson stared up into the withered face above him, and then, with a groan of dawning conviction, he took the letters. He opened the one on the top.

How strange! The handwriting was not unlike his own. But that was too trivial to marvel over. It was the contents of the letter that at once benumbed and tore his heart in twain.

“Dear father and mother,” it began; “I am longing for the old home to-night; but, as you say, it is perhaps best that I should never come back again, especially as the facts are known in the neighborhood. The things you write me in regard to Annette's past are, alas! only too true. I don't deny them. Perhaps I'm the only one in the world who will overlook them, for I happen to know how she was tried by poverty and temptation when she was hardly more than a child. But on one point I can set your minds at rest. You seem to think that I intend to marry her; but I promise you now that I shall never link your honored name to hers. Really the poor girl doesn't wish it. She seems to understand how you feel exactly. And the baby! you are worried over its future. Let that go. As soon as the war is over, I shall do my full duty by it. It is nameless, as you say, and that fact may sting it later in life, but such things have happened before, and, my dear father and mother, young men have fallen into bad ways before, and—”

Nelson Floyd read no further. Turning the time-stained sheet over, he saw his father's signature. With lifeless fingers he opened one or two of the other letters. He tried to glance at the fly-leaves of the books on his quivering knees, but there was a blur before his sight. The scrawny hands of the old man were stretched out to prevent the mass from falling to the floor.

“Are you satisfied? That's the main thing,” he said. “Because, if you are not, there are plenty of legal records which—”

“I am satisfied.” Nelson stood up, his inert hand on the back of the rocking-chair he had just vacated.

“I was going to say if you are not I can give you further proof. I can cite to you old legal documents to which my brother signed his name. He got hard up and sold a piece of land to me once. I have that deed. You are welcome to—”

“I am satisfied.” Those words seemed the only ones of which the young man's bewildered brain were capable. But he was a gentleman to the core of his being. “I'm sorry I intruded on you, Mr. Floyd. Only blind ignorance on my part—” He went no further.

The inanimate objects about him, the chairs, the table, the door towards which he was moving, seemed to have life.

“Well, good-day.” Old Floyd remained in the centre of the room, the books and letters held awkwardly under his stiff arm. “I see that you were not expecting this revelation, but you might as-well have been told to-day as later. I understand that the Duncans and Prices up your way are under wrong impressions about your social standing, but I didn't want to be the one to open their eyes. I really don't care myself. However, a thing like that is sure to get out sooner or later.”

“They shall know the truth,” said Floyd, with the lips of a dead man. “I shall not sail under false colors. Good-day, Mr. Floyd.”

Out into the broad, balmy sunlight the young man went. There was a despondent droop upon him. His step was slow and uncertain, his feet seemed to him to have weights attached to them. He walked on to the corner of the next street and leaned against a tree. From the city's palpitating heart and stony veins came the hum of traffic on wheels, the clanging of bells, the escaping of steam. Near by some one was practising a monotonous exercise on a piano. He looked up at the sky with the stare of a subject under hypnotic influence.

A lump was in his dry throat. He made an effort to swallow it down, but it stuck and pained him. Persons passing caught sight of his face and threw back stares of mute inquiry as they moved on. After half an hour of aimless wandering here and there through the crowded streets, he paused at the door of a bar-room. He recognized the big gilt sign on the plate-glass windows, and remembered being there years before at midnight with some jolly friends and being taken to his hotel in a cab. After all, whiskey now, as then, would furnish forgetfulness, and that was his right. He went in and sat down at a little round table in the corner of the room. On a shelf near him was a bowl of brown pretzels, a plate of salted pop-corn, a saucer of parched coffee-beans mixed with cloves. One of the bartenders came to him, a towel over his arm. “What will you have, sir?” he asked.

“Rye whiskey straight,” said the customer, his eyes on the sawdust at his feet. “Bring the bottle along.”

---