knocking that had the dull resonance of metal clashing against metal. To Kenwick it was perfectly obvious now that someone was trying to gain entrance at that broken dining-room window. He tested his unbandaged foot upon the floor and drew himself stealthily to a standing position. And then he turned himself slowly in the direction of the darkened dining-room.

CHAPTER IV

The Morgan home on Pine Street was a rambling old house; the only shingle structure in a block of modern concrete apartments. To the elder Morgans it had been the fulfilment of a dream; a home of their own in San Francisco. Clinton Morgan had lived only a year after its completion, and his widow, in spite of the pressure of hard times and the inadequacy of the income which he left, had resisted all tempting offers to sell the old place and had brought up her son and daughter with a reverence for family tradition as incongruous to their environment and generation as was the old shingle house among its businesslike neighbors.

And then, eight years after Clinton Morgan's death, oil had been discovered in his holdings over at Coalinga, and the last year of Sarah Morgan's life had been spent in affluence. But she had never parted with the old home. At the end of that year she had called Clinton, Jr., then a young instructor in chemistry at the university, to her bedside and laid a last charge upon him.

"Clint,"—Her voice held that note of unconscious tyranny that approaching death gives to last utterances. For in the moment of dissolution there is not one among us but is granted the crown and scepter of autocracy. "Clint, don't let the old place go. Fix it over any way you and Marcreta like, but keep it in the family as long as you live."

"Yes, Mother."

"And Clint, there is something else."

"I know, Mother. It's Marcreta. But you needn't worry about her."

"I don't believe in death-bed promises. It's not right to try to tie up anybody's future. But——You see, if she were strong and well, I wouldn't be anxious; I wouldn't say anything but——"

"You don't need to say anything, Mother. I'll always look out for her."

A white, blue-veined hand stretched across the counterpane groping for his. A moment later Marcreta was holding the other and brother and sister faced each other alone.

It was about a 

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