Samuel rose abruptly. "See here, brother," he said with an effort to command his usual manner, "why not let well enough alone? I've treated Sylvester civilly here under your roof. What more can you ask? What's the use of stirring up strife on Christmas Day?"
"Am I trying to stir up strife?" breathed Stephen Kingsley, his delicate face turning even a shade paler than was its wont. "I—Sam, I'd give my right hand—not that it's worth much—to see strife end between you and Syl, here—on Christmas Day.... What was that, Sam? What was that?"
Samuel ran heavily to the door, opened it, looked out, glanced back, then rushed through and shut the door sharply on the outside.
"O, Lord, dear Lord, not any of the children, on Christmas Day!" pleaded a low voice inside.
It was Jim Dent who had reached young Syl first when he fell through the well from the third story to the first of Uncle Stephen's spacious old halls. Young Syl, Samuel's twelve-year-old son, named for his Uncle Sylvester at a period when the brothers had been business partners and close friends, had been having a lively scuffle with his cousin Harold, Uncle George's fourteen-year-old athlete. The set-to had raged all over the house, had reached the third story, and had arrived at a point where any means for either to get the better of the other had prevailed. Harold had succeeded in forcing his adversary into a position where he could throw him, after some schoolboy method, and, blinded by the excitement of the affair, had not realized just where he was. He had thrown Syl with such success that the younger boy had lost his clutch upon his antagonist and had gone over the low rail before Harold knew what had happened.
"Keep cool!" was Jim's first command, learned in many an emergency on school and college athletic fields. "A boy can stand a lot, and he landed on the rug."
They tried hard to obey him. His mother succeeded best, his father least. Samuel Kingsley could not wait to see his boy return to consciousness, could not wait after he had summoned a physician—two physicians—by telephone, but must needs rush out to get the gray roadster, with its sixty-horse-power cylinders, declaring that he would meet Graham on the way. Graham ran only a turtle of a forty-horsepower machine and would never get there.
His mechanician, Evans, was not on the ground. He, with Ledds, Sylvester's chauffeur, had gone off on some Christmasing of their own. With hands that trembled Samuel got his motor throbbing—it took time, because of the stiffening cold of all the mechanism. Then he leaped into his car.
"Better take time to put on your coat and gloves," said a voice behind him. "You'll drive faster, warm."
His brother Sylvester climbed in beside him, himself in fur-lined garments. He held Samuel's coat for him, and handed his brother the heavy motoring gloves of which Samuel had not stopped to think.