AT the breakfast table the next morning neither Tommy nor Mr. Leigh made any allusion to the stock-selling campaign. But as his father was leaving Tommy told him:

“Colonel Willetts said last night he would help me place the stock. I'm to call at his office again.”

“Do so by all means, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, with an almost cold formality. “Be sure you make the points I explained to you yesterday, particularly the probable permanency of dividends under a far-sighted policy, and the equally certain depreciation of both principal and income from real-estate holdings in New York City. A political or even a social revolution will hurt such a business as Mr. Thompson has planned far less than it will real estate, which not only cannot be hidden or moved, but has innumerable natural enemies, such as the shifting centers of trade and fashion and inefficient or corrupt municipal government. You might tell him that under certain circumstances all land partakes of the quality of mud, and the wisest of men can get stuck in the mud.”

Tommy gasped. The man he had known as his father had spoken like this. Mr. Leigh went on judicially:

“Ask him whether his gains from the unearned increment as well as from increases in values in certain sections have fully offset his losses from the decline of what he considered choice property ten or fifteen years ago. Ask him whether he thinks the big financial institutions, like the life-insurance companies, are comfortable over their ownership of properties they have had to take over to protect their own gilt-edge first mortgages. Real estate is a tradition of his family, and you must make him think of the future. Good morning, Thomas.”

His father was more of a business man than Tommy had ever dreamed. His advice was sound. But—

A theory came to Tommy ready-made, from the birthplace of all explanations. Obviously long years of brooding on his dead wife and on what he had done to keep his promise to her had made Mr. Leigh morbid. He had remained a bookkeeper because the only way in which he could continue to avert discovery was by remaining where he could conceal his deeds. It made the repayment of the seventeen thousand dollars more than ever urgent. Where could Tommy borrow it, since it was out of the question to think of earning so vast a sum in a short time? He must consult Mr. Thompson. If he could not confide fully, he might at least put a hypothetical question, give hints, sound Mr. Thompson somehow. But before he could speak to Thompson he must sell the stock.

He was to lunch at the college dub with Rivington. He doubtless would meet friends there who might take a few hundred shares. The dollars that Tommy had to raise suddenly became so heavy that Tommy despaired.

At the dub he was lucky enough to meet Red Mead, whose father was a capitalist and—so Red said—had been very successful in finding highly profitable investments in all sorts of manufacturing enterprises. Red told Tommy he was sure the old gentleman would fall for a hundred thousand bucks, provided the talk was sufficiently convincing to justify Mr. Mead in sending an expert to look over the property. Whereat Tommy promised to call on Mr. Mead, though he was almost certain Red's father was the kind that wanted big dividends. And Bull Wilson told him that only the day before his father was regretting not having taken a block of Bishop-Wolf automobile stock that was offered to him for thirty-five thousand dollars three years before and was now worth a million.

“He's your meat, Tommy. He's gone to Washington with his patent lawyer. When he comes back I'll tell him that I've asked you to do me the favor to call on him before you see any one else.” Tommy did not permit himself to feel encouraged by these promises; nevertheless, he decided not to see Colonel Willetts until after he had tried elsewhere. But Rivington insisted upon going to his father's office that very afternoon.

“They are always after him. Every time he invests in a new thing or puts up another building he talks poverty for a month. You just chase yourself down-town right away.”

Rivington's obvious eagerness to see Tommy succeed had the effect of making Tommy feel that, after all, his friends were in New York. The work lay in Dayton, but his happiness in New York. For a moment, as he held Rivington's hand, Tommy felt that his stay in Dayton thereafter must be tinged by the regret that he could not see his best friend every day. But the work was too important. If only Rivington would move to Dayton! Of course if Rivington was there Marion would visit him frequently. What a place Dayton would be evenings!

In the Subway on his way to Colonel Willetts's office Tommy's mood left him. The New York he saw about him, with its alien faces—all kinds of faces and all alien—was not the place for him to work in. And his own particular New York was very small—a city with a score of inhabitants. His real life could never merge with the life of the strange and dislikable New York he saw in the streets and in the shops and in the office buildings. He could not work here, where every man was concerned with himself and no one else, and so plainly showed it in his face. New York could never be a city of brothers, of men who wished both to be helped and to help. He would go back to Dayton, of course. And he must take back checks for a total of two hundred thousand dollars. He must! And he would!

He paused a moment in the hallway of the sixth floor of the Willetts Building, one of Wall Street's earliest skyscrapers, and considered a moment how he should proceed. He was about to grasp the knob of the door of Colonel Willetts's office when the door opened and Mr. Leigh came out.

“Father!” cried Tommy. His plans, not very elaborate, were knocked into a cocked hat. Misery, indefinite but poignant, filled him.

“Thomas!” gasped Mr. Leigh. He was more startled than his son. To Tommy his father's look was one of guilt. And a guilty look on that face was like turning the calcium-light on the secret.

“I—I had to see Colonel Willetts on bank business,” stammered Mr. Leigh. He glanced at Tommy uncomfortably and quickly looked away. Then he said, apologetically, almost pleadingly: “I thought it expedient, while I was there, to speak about your errand to New York. I—I gave him my opinion of the—investment.”

“But I asked you—I hoped you would not speak about it,” said Tommy, unhappy rather than annoyed. And then, with the illogicality of sorrow, Tommy thought that his father knew so little about the company that any advice he might give about the investment could not be strictly honest advice.

“Colonel Willetts is a director of the Marshall National, and our bank has close relations with it. I have done no harm to you, Thomas.” Tommy was frowning because of his own disinclination to recognize ungrudgingly that his father had been prompted by loyalty and love. Old people were like that. And now his father was actually and visibly afraid of incurring the displeasure of the son for whom he had done so much—too much! And that son actually was thinking of his own grievances! Moreover, the damage, if any, was done.

“You meant for the best, dad!” said Tommy, with a smile, and held out his hand. “I expect you will have to wait till I grow up before I get some sense.”

His father's hand clutched his so tightly that Tommy's resentment turned into remorse.

“I'll make the points you told me last night, dad. They are mighty good points!” And he meant it.

“Good luck, Thomas,” said the old man, more composedly, and walked away. Tommy looked after him, and for the first time in his life realized that Mr. Leigh's shoulders were inclined to stoop. Years and years of bending over his ledger had left on him the mark of the modern galley slave. Tommy's dislike of bookkeeping rose on the spot to a positive hatred. Also, the stoop showed the weight of a burden heavy beyond words!

He decided that the moment the money was paid back he would ask his father to move to Day-ton, far away from the bank, and live with his only son, who by that time should be able to support both.

“He will never leave the old house,” decided Tommy next. It meant so much to him: the house where Tommy's mother had lived, where Tommy was born, where she died. The sentiment and also the wing-clipping habit of a lifetime made sudden changes dangerous to old age.

“A hell of a world!” came next.

Well, work that a man could take an interest in was invented so that a man need not care whether or not it was a hell of a world.