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He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, Sr. burst out of the library, his face hard-set. "I thought you were going this evening!" he exclaimed. "By what right do you come here?" He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather's figure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the least disturbed by the other's temper. "Oh, no!
Lieutenant Irvin gave him the paper in which was printed Governor Brown's famous address to the people of Georgia. "This news," said Lieutenant Irvin, "absolutely sent the old man to bed." Toombs remained a week at Colonel Prather's, and in the meantime sent Lieutenant Irvin to Savannah with important letters. He desired to escape, if possible, through the port of Savannah.
That note of John Prather's voice that had sounded so familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he was particularly suave. "This is the end that is the understanding the end?" demanded John Wingfield, Sr. "Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. He did not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. offer to take it.
"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist Prather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the arroyo and lay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw his hands away from the wound. "My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have all life before me!
The Jack that now rose from the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather's smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! I will know!" Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington had just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yet to-night!
It dropped over the sheer walls of the chasm, three hundred feet down, and refused to be drowned out by the rush and roar of the waters, as they leaped over the boulders, until it had accomplished its mission. For here in Prather's Mill Road burned the slow fires that kept the Government officials in Atlanta at a white heat. They were burning now.
Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turned around in the elevator. In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jack and Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen that Jack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. His answer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire.
And Doctor Keltridge says that you are gaining fast." Reed looked up suddenly, incisively. "Did Doctor Keltridge say that?" he demanded. "Well, not in those exact words; but that was the burden of his song, the motif of his story, if I may speak so shoppishly." Again Prather's hand sought his mustache. "It is quite evident to everybody, Opdyke, that you are on the gain."
All the while he had kept watch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoically as a confirmation of his suspicions. "So, if you will take my advice, brother, the best thing for you to do is to ride back before we reach the water-hole, unless you prefer Leddy's company. This time he will fight you in his way."
I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching to class to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it must for every man who counts for something in the world." Throughout, Prather's tone, except for the one moment of anger, had been that of an even recital of facts by one who does not allow himself to consider anything but facts in the judgment of his position.
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