"I have done my duty. I always do my duty; under
all circumstances. I am doing my duty now by Sam."
This was when he and his son fell out on one point or another, as they
had begun to do as soon as young Sam learned to talk; and all because
the father insisted upon furnishing the boy with his own most
excellent principles and theories, instead of letting the lad
manufacture such things for himself. Now when Sam was twenty-three the
falling-out had become chronic. No doubt it was in the blood, as Dr.
Lavendar said. Some thirty years before, Sam senior, then a slim and
dreamy youth, light-hearted and given to writing verses, had fallen
out with his father, old Benjamin Wright; fallen out so finally that
in all these years since, the two men, father and son, had not spoken
one word to each other. If anybody might have been supposed to know
the cause of that thirty-year-old feud it was Dr. Lavendar. He
certainly saw the beginning of it....
One stormy March evening Samuel Wright, then twenty-four years old,
knocked at the Rectory door; Dr. Lavendar, shielding his lamp from the
wind with one hand, opened it himself.
"Why, Sam, my boy," he said and stopped abruptly. He led the way into
his study and put the lamp down on the table. "Something is the
matter?"
"Yes."
"What is it, Samuel?"
"I can't tell you, sir."
"Does your father know?"
"My father knows.
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