"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face. "Young North Side
millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!"
"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
"And YOU come to tell me that?"
Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and
in the first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the
unuttered cry of accusation:
"Why wasn't it you?"
CHAPTER XII
Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
in his mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and
Bibbs wondered how many million times that had happened since men
first made a word to name the sons of one mother. Almost literally
he had buried his strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces
when he saw his dead son. He had nothing to help him meet the shock,
neither definite religion nor "philosophy" definite or indefinite.
He could only beat his forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed
with an ax, while his wife was helpless except to entreat him not to
"take on," herself adding a continuous lamentation.
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