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.

How immense a nerve the old man had to make such a will, which outraged every convention of social and family life; which was, in effect, a proclamation that his son Carnac had no place in John Grier's scheme of things, while John Grier's wife was rewarded like some faithful old servant.