The Ghost Breaker

e settle, he knelt by the body, even as a knight of old, to take his vows. He raised his clenched right hand.

"Father! I swear by my love for you and my mother that I will wipe out the Marcums, cost what it may. I will devote my life to settling the score Jim Marcum has made. I swear it to you, father!"

It seemed to him as though a faint smile of approbation flitted across the face despite the seal of the Great Calm. Even as he knelt there, his quick brain began to lay the plans--and then ... then he remembered what he must see upstairs! His brief moments in the old home had been so absorbed by the dying words of his sire, by the engulfing flame of hate which had burned away all the sweetness of the environment, that he had selfishly forgotten everything but his own grief.

He staggered to his feet and walked slowly from the room.

Outside the door, on an old-fashioned chair in the long corridor running from portico to kitchen, he found faithful Rusty, sobbing with his face in his ha