Carnac had no quarrel with his fate. When in the old home on the
hill he had heard the will, it had surprised him, but it had not shocked
him. He had looked to be the discarded heir, and he knew it now without
rebellion. He had never tried to smooth the path to that financial
security which his father could give. Yet now that disaster had come,
there was a glimmer of remorse, of revolt, because there was some one
besides himself who might think he had thrown away his chances. He did
not know that over on the mountain-side, vituperating the memory of the
dead man, Junia was angry only for Carnac's sake.
With the black storm of sudden death roaring in his ears, he had a sense
of freedom, almost of licence. Nothing that had been his father's was now
his own, or his mother's, except the land and house on which they were.
All the great business John Grier had built up was gone into the hands of
the usurper, a young, bold, pestilent, powerful, vigorous man. It seemed
suddenly horrible that the timber-yards and the woods and the offices,
and the buildings of John Grier's commercial business were not under his
own direction, or that of his mother, or brother. They had ceased to be
factors in the equation; they were 'non est' in the postmortem history of
John Grier.
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