"What's that noise? Isn't it the distant beat of horses?"
"No," said the doctor, listening; "it's the roar of the falls we hear, from a sudden change of the wind."
"I'm done now," Stoneman went on, slowly, fumbling his hands. "My life has been a failure. The dice of God are always loaded."
His great head drooped lower, and he continued:
"Mightiest of all was my motive of revenge. Fierce business and political feuds wrecked my iron-mills I shouldered their vast debts, and paid the last mortgage of a hundred thousand dollars the week before Lee invaded my state. I stood on the hill in the darkness, cried, raved cursed, while I watched his troops lay those mills in ashes. Then and there I swore that I'd live until I ground the South beneath my heel! When I got back to my house, they had buried a Confederate soldier in the field. I dug his body up, carted it to the woods, and threw it into a ditch"
The hand of the white-haired Southerner suddenly gripped old Stoneman's throat—and then relaxed. His head sank on his breast, and he cried in anguish:
"God be merciful to me a sinner! Would I, too, seek revenge!"
Stoneman looked at the doctor, dazed by his sudden onslaught and collapse.
"Yes, he was somebody's boy down here," he went on, "who was loved perhaps even as I love—I don't blame you. See, in the inside pocket next to my heart I carry the pictures of Phil and Elsie taken from babyhood up,
