“TOMMY was talking to La Grange, or rather listening to the engineer, who was telling him how Bill Byrnes had become a highbrow scientist. La Grange, whose technical studies had been pursued in this country and abroad, had become a college lecturer for Bill's benefit.

“You wouldn't recognize Bill. Not a peep from him when he is interrupted. He thinks time is no object. I told him yesterday he worked like a man who is paid by the day, with the boss away on a vacation, and he just nodded. He isn't annoyed because he has not yet revolutionized the industry.”

“Will he land it, do you think?”

“I don't know. It's promising. I think he is on the right track, but the job seems more difficult to me than to him. Still he seems to have the instinct. Revolutions come and go without revoluting for shucks. There's where Thompson is a wonder. We've been after Thompson to make certain improvements these past two years, and he put us off with pleasant words. He was right—we weren't ready for him. And when we thought that some time in 1925 we'd have a beautiful model, he suddenly informs us that he is now ready. I tell you, Tommy, Thompson—”

An office-boy came in and said to Tommy, “Mr. Thompson wants you.”

Tommy, his arm about Freddy's neck—he had hired Freddy—walked to Mr. Thompson's office. His heart was free from care. Bill was happy and at work. La Grange had confirmed his own suspicions of Thompson's genius; work on the foundation of the new plant had begun, and the future was bright.

Thompson was seated at his desk, talking to Grosvenor and Holland, who were standing. As Tommy entered the men looked at him, and started a trifle hastily to leave the room.

Tommy said, “Good afternoon,” brightly, and both Holland, the treasurer, and Mr. Grosvenor nodded in reply. Their eyes lingered on Tommy a moment, a look of curiosity and something else besides, something else that Tommy could scarcely call unfriendly, and yet that was not friendly, as if they didn't quite see the Tommy Leigh they used to know.

Mr. Thompson did not look up at Tommy. He was staring at the pen-tray on his desk.

“You sent for me, Mr. Thompson?” asked Tommy.

“Yes.” Still Thompson did not look up.

The atmosphere of the office suddenly changed for Tommy. It was now full of distinct unfriendliness. It filled him with that depressing curiosity which is half apprehension and grows fearward with every second of silence.

Presently Thompson raised his head and looked at Tommy. In his steady brown eyes there was neither friendliness nor hostility, neither warmth nor coldness. Their expression was what it might have been if he had looked casually at a chair in the corner of the room.

“Leigh,” he began, and his use of the surname made Tommy's heart skip a beat, “you have succeeded in making me doubt my ability to read character.”

Tommy was certain there was a mistake somewhere. He evolved a dozen theories in a flash, even one that somebody had deliberately planned a trick to ruin him, some devilishly ingenious frame-up.

“H-how is th-that, sir?” asked Tommy, and he could have killed himself for the stammering and the huskiness that made his own voice sound guilty. And Thompson—was Thompson no longer a friend?

Thompson looked at Tommy with a meditative expression that had in it enough accusation to make Tommy square his shoulders and look Mr. Thompson full in the eyes.

“I have followed your orders to the best of my ability. You knew how little I knew.” Tommy's voice was firm.

“You can't even guess what makes me say what I have said to you?” Thompson's voice did not express incredulity, but it was not pleasant.

“No, sir. I know it's a mistake of some sort, and I am afraid it must be something serious to make you speak the way you do. But I also know I have done nothing since I came here—or before I came here—that I wouldn't tell you.”

“Nothing?” persisted Thompson.

“Nothing,” said Tommy, firmly, “for which you can hold me personally responsible.” There was only one thing that he had not told Thompson, and he was not to blame for it, though he expected to suffer for it and always had expected it.

For the first—and the last—time in his life Tommy actually saw Mr. Thompson shake his head as if puzzled.

“Holland received by express from New York this morning the twenty stock certificates of a hundred shares each made out to John B. Kendrick. A letter came with them from Colonel van Schaick Willetts requesting us to transfer on our books eighteen hundred shares, as per indorsement, to one man, and the new certificates turned over to that one man and a receipt therefor obtained from him and sent to New York. Do you know the name of that one man?”

“No, sir, unless it was Colonel Willetts himself.”

“The name,” Thompson said, slowly, his eyes fixed on Tommy's, “was Thomas Francis Leigh.” Tommy looked at Thompson in such utter amazement that Thompson looked serious. He hated mysteries, and this mystery doubly irritated him because it concerned his company, and because it concerned one of his pet experiments.

“I see you really don't, know what it means. But can't you guess?”

“No, sir,” answered Tommy. “Perhaps Colonel Willetts has written to me about it, but I haven't received the letter. Shall I telegraph him? I can't understand it, Mr. Thompson.” Tommy was no longer alarmed, only mystified. And he was conscious, notwithstanding the confusion in his mind, of an all-pervading feeling of relief.

Thompson rose from his chair and stood up beside Tommy. “Now, Tommy,” he said, “go over the whole thing in your mind from the beginning, step by step.”

Feeling himself reinstated by the use of his first name, Tommy became calm. “I can't see why he should do it unless he wants to make me personally responsible in some way—”

Thompson shook his head. “It isn't that, Tommy. Would he make you a present of the stock? You know your personal relations with him and his family. He is a very rich man, I understand. The other two hundred shares are to be made out to Rivington Willetts and Marion Willetts.”

Tommy thought of how Marion had interested herself in the matter; but not more so than Rivington. The colonel might have given to Tommy a hundred shares; but even so, ten thousand dollars was too big a gift, let alone a hundred and eighty thousand.

“I don't think it possible. I am sure it isn't a gift. He, moreover, promised to interest other friends of mine. I can't understand it.”

“Tommy, discard obvious impossibilities, but remember that the improbable is always possible. Think calmly. Take your time and don't look so infernally troubled. Because somebody has transferred a block of stock to you is no sign you have committed a crime.”

Tommy started electrically. He recalled his father's vehement desire that his son should not fail to place the stock, his visit to Colonel Willetts's office, notwithstanding Tommy's urgent requests for non-intervention, his insane determination to have Tommy succeed. He remembered also Colonel Willetts's early confession that the deal did not interest him in a business way, and his inexplicable good nature at the second interview; his promise that he would himself see that the stock was apportioned later among Tommy's friends' fathers; the utter unbusinesslike quality of the entire affair. It was all plain to Tommy now. There was only one explanation. His quick imagination proceeded to dramatize it. Then, boy-like, he melodramatized it.

His father had done it. His success in averting discovery for years, by making him feel safe against the danger that Tommy so poignantly dreaded, had made the trusted bank employee play for a last huge stake. To help his son at any cost had become not a habit, but an obsession. A madman had done this. But would the world so consider it?

“Mr. Thompson?” he exclaimed, miserably.

“Yes, my boy.”

“I—I—”

“Do you think you know now?”

“N—no. But I—I must return to New York—at once—to-night!”

“Can you tell me—”

“I can't because I don't—know for sure.” He bit his lip.

Thompson pulled out his pocket-book, took some yellowbacks from it, gave them to Tommy, and said: “A train leaves in forty minutes. Take my car, outside. Get your things. Come back from New York with the explanation. It is time you had it. If there isn't any explanation, come back anyhow. Tell me as much as you please—or nothing at all. It will make no difference to us here. We know you, Tommy, even if I did you an injustice for a moment, though I really couldn't see how I had made a mistake.”

“I hope you haven't,” said Tommy. The time must come when Thompson would know all.

“And, by the way, I'll take the stock off your hands at a slight—”

“It isn't mine—”

“No matter whose it is, I'll take it at a hundred and five. That will give you or your friends—”

“No, sir. I must find out—”

“You do what I tell you. At a hundred and five—two hundred and ten thousand dollars,” said Thompson, sternly. “But you come back here, do you hear? You are becoming really valuable to us. Run along now.”

Tommy wrung Thompson's hand, pocketed the hundred dollars his chief had given him and, unable to speak, rushed from the office.

He caught his train, but Dayton was far behind him before he was able to think coherently of the affair. The more calmly he thought, the more certain he became that his father was responsible. It gave him not a new problem to solve, but the conviction that the old problem plus this new phase must be settled once for all. He could not live through another six months like the last.

So he thought of the last six months. He remembered how, after his father's confession, the secret had appeared before him, a flaming sword in its hand. It had driven him out of New York. He had sought respite in Dayton, and there he had become a man, in this new world that was all the world there could now be for him.

The secret, therefore, had given to him not only the will, but the power to fight now. He had Thompson for an ally—Thompson, who had said, “Come back with or without an explanation”; Thompson, who would understand, as no other man could understand, how his father had been prompted to do this evil deed by nothing more evil than a great and unreasoning love. And the great and unreasoning love had changed the mind that could think of nothing but to fulfil at any cost his promises to a dead wife. Oh, Thompson would surely understand!

Yet he could not say that his father was legally insane. He was, in fact, a keen and shrewd man, who had surprised Tommy with his advice as to what he should tell Willetts. But on one subject his father was as irresponsible as a child. That was it—a child. And Tommy found himself reversing their positions, until Mr. Leigh was the son and Tommy the father, whose duty it was to protect the poor boy.

Well, Tommy would tell his father that the stock must be given up and the money refunded, and nobody would be blamed, at least not by Tommy. It was his duty to undo the mischief. Not knowing how it was done, he could not tell how it might be undone. Tommy wished he might ask Thompson for advice. He regretted not having taken Thompson into his confidence; and then ceased to regret it when he considered that he could have given no data of value to Thompson. He would learn the facts and then he could talk to Thompson intelligently. He must do it as quickly as possible, because he was no longer impelled by the fear of what the world might think, but by the conviction that he must do his duty at any cost, in undoing the wrong done to the bank.

This new attitude of Tommy's toward the tragedy of his life robbed the secret of most of its terrors. His hands were now clean—and his father's were smeared with love! Motive was everything—Tommy's and Mr. Leigh's. And in excusing his father Tommy did not condone the offense, but did better—forgave it! And the difference between forgiveness this time and the forgiveness he had granted whenever he had thought of his father's love was that this time Tommy forgave after he had determined deliberately to do what might make the secret public property. He was no longer thinking of self.

He arrived shortly after midday on Thursday. His father had not come from the bank. Tommy decided not to call on Colonel Willetts until after he had talked to his father. And he would not seek his father in the bank, although he was so impatient to settle the affair that he found waiting an appalling strain on his overwrought nerves.

All manner of discomforting thoughts assailed him as he waited—thoughts that almost made his resolution waver. Suppose discovery, by some devilish chance, already had come on this very day? Supposing Tommy was too late, and the virtue gone out of his own desire to be himself the one to end the suspense? It would be the final blow if Tommy, in being himself the assassin of his own career, could not thereby save his own soul! Tommy wandered restlessly about the house, going from room to room. He saw his mother's photograph on the library table, and visualized the long and lonely days of the poor old man in this home without a wife, in this house without a son, with no companion save the consciousness of his loneliness and of his deeds—a great love paid for in the fear and the horror of discovery.

“Poor dad!” said Tommy, aloud, and went into his father's bedroom. On the bureau was another photograph of Tommy's mother. And then the long, gray history of the old man unrolled itself even more vividly before the boy's soul, until his throat lumped achingly and the tears came into his eyes. He could not speak; he dared not think. So he passed his hand over his father's pillow instinctively, caressingly, smoothed it and patted it mechanically.

“Poor dad! Poor dad!” he muttered to the ghost of his father that was in the room with him.

He must not speak brutally to his father. He would wait until after supper. Then in the library, very quietly, with his arm about the old bent shoulders, he would say: “Dad, why did you do it a second time? Let us go about it calmly and undo it, so that we may both feel better.”

It would be easier than he had feared. It was not so difficult to be square, once you have made up your mind. Tommy felt a great sense of relief. He heard the front door open and close, and he hastened from the library. From the top of the stairs he shouted:

“Hello, dad! Here I am!”

He saw his father start violently and look up, and then he remembered he had not telegraphed. He ran down the stairs with right hand outstretched.

He saw the look of alarm in Mr. Leigh's eyes change to fear, and then to something worse.

“What—what—” gasped the old man.

“Oh, I wanted to see you,” said Tommy, and shook his father's icy-cold hand violently.

“Has the company—Have you—lost your position?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?” The old man's voice still betrayed apprehension, but on his face was a stem frown.

“I'll tell you—after supper.”

“No, no; I must know at once! What is it, Thomas?”

He walked into the old-fashioned front parlor and confronted his son. Tommy saw the old man who was his father, took in the pale face and the tightly compressed lips.

It was a signed confession. His heart sank, but it came back, buoyed on the ocean of love and pity and tenderness that filled his soul.

“Dad,” said Tommy, huskily, “I am not blaming you. Nothing that you have done and nothing that you can do can make me forget that I am your son and that you have done it for me—and for my mother.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Leigh, and did not look at his son.

“It's this. Yesterday Mr. Thompson called me in and told me that eighteen hundred shares of Tecumseh stock had been transferred from Kendrick's, Colonel Willetts's confidential clerk, to my name.” Tommy looked at his father to see what effect his words might have. Even at the last moment he hoped to see astonishment.

But Mr. Leigh nodded feverishly and said: “Yes, yes! And then what?”

“Mr. Thompson asked me what it meant, so I said I didn't know. I couldn't explain.”

“So you couldn't! So you couldn't!” as though he blamed the others for expecting it.

“I was afraid to explain,” said Tommy, slowly, “because I assumed it—it was you who did it. Was it, father?”

Tommy tried to speak calmly, in the vain hope that by so doing he would think calmly. But his heart was beating furiously and his very soul within him was in a quiver. And still so strong was hope that Tommy, who had lost hope, hoped his father would deny.

Mr. Leigh said nothing, but stared at Tommy almost blankly.

“Was it, father?”

The old man nodded slowly.

“Why did you do it, dad? Why did you?” asked Tommy, bitterly. Then he remembered what he had decided to do, and his bitterness turned into grief. He approached his father and put an arm about him and repeated, brokenly: “Oh, dad, why did you do it? Why did you?”

He felt a great shudder run through the old shoulders, and that made him clasp them the tighter.

“I—I felt you deserved it, Thomas. And I thought you—you would like it.”

“How could you think such a thing when you knew how I felt about the money you had—you had spent for me, that I was trying to pay back?”

“I thought only,” said the old man, in the dispirited monotone that Tommy now associated with a confession of guilt and an attempt to excuse the inexcusable, “that your mother would have been so proud of you, a stockholder in the company, an owner as well as an employee, earning your wages like an honest man.” Mr. Leigh nodded to himself again and again.

“But, father, how could I allow it? How could you think—”

“I am your father. Willetts would take only the two hundred shares he had promised to take for his children. I knew your heart was set upon raising the money, and that you would have been disappointed with your certain failure with your other friends, so I—I told Willetts to subscribe for the whole two thousand shares and to tell you he would distribute them later. I would take the rest. I knew you wanted it, Thomas. And being himself a father, he understood. I spoke to some friends and they were willing, but they were not your friends; and then I thought, 'Why shouldn't my only son own that stock himself?' And so it's your stock. It's paid for and nobody can take it away from you.” He paused. Then he repeated. “Nobody can take it away from you!” and looked defiantly at his only son.

Tommy's heart sank; but he shook his head kindly and, as one speaks to a child, said: “Well, I'll have to give it up. Mr. Thompson said he would buy the stock back himself—”

“Certainly not!” interrupted Mr. Leigh, decidedly.

“At an advance of five per cent., father.”

“Certainly not. It's your stock, bought and paid for—”

The stubborn look on Mr. Leigh's face made Tommy interrupt sternly:

“Yes, but paid for with what money?”

The old man started. He seemed suddenly to remember something now for the first time. He waved his hand as though he were brushing away an annoying insect. Then he said, firmly:

“Willetts got his money. It was arranged that the stock would be transferred to whatever name I gave him. He didn't give the money to you. I gave it to him—a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, as I had agreed.”

Tommy was so sure now that he was right in all he had surmised that his own resolutions came back to him.. He looked at his father steadily and forgivingly. What he had planned to do must be done. The secret must become public property. Then the agony would be ended.

“I understand perfectly, dad; but it makes a difference where the money came from.”

“It came from your father,” retorted Mr. Leigh, sternly.

“Yes, I know all that. But where did my father get it?” said Tommy, patiently.

The old man took a step toward his son and checked himself abruptly.

“I took it,” he spoke in a low voice, “from the bank.”

Tommy's heart stopped beating. He had known there could be no other explanation, and yet this was really the first as it was the final confirmation. That his father was not in his right mind Tommy knew now. Long years of brooding—and the habit of taking! Unfortunate success in averting discovery had made him feel safe. Tommy craved to ask Thompson for advice. If Thompson were only here he would know what questions to ask and what remedies to suggest. If Thompson were only in New York!

But he wasn't and Tommy was, and Tommy must fight alone. He must fight the president of the bank—but not his own father!

“Then we'll have to put the money back in the bank, dad—don't you see?”

“Put it back?” repeated Mr. Leigh.

“Certainly. There is nothing else for us to do. And the question now is how must we go about it so that—so that we can put it back?” Tommy carefully included himself in the operation, because he wished his father to know that he considered himself just as guilty. They stood together in this.

“Why must we put it back?” persisted Mr. Leigh.

Tommy checked his impatience and answered, “Because you took it from the bank—”

The look of grim resolution that Tommy had often seen came into his father's face. The fight must be against senile stubbornness!

“I took it from the bank”—and the old man's voice, belying his grimly resolute look, sank to a whisper—“because I had it on deposit there. It was idle.”

“Huh?” grunted Tommy.

“It was drawing no interest, and I could think of no better investment than to devote it to my only son's happiness,” finished Mr. Leigh, quietly.

“What are you saying, father?” cried Tommy, And then his sudden hope burst into pieces and vanished. His father was insane; his words furnished irrefutable proof. Tommy realized he must do nothing in a hurry. He must telephone to Thompson.

“I am saying that I had no better use for the money, and so I bought the Tecumseh stock for you. A great deal of money has been made in automobile manufacturing, and all my advices were that your friend Thompson was a man of high character and undoubted business ability.”

Tommy's mind was in a daze. This came from trying to think of too many things too quickly, and at the same time trying not to let an unwarranted sense of relief fill his soul, as it was violently seeking to do. He shook his head; and then he blinked his eyes again and again and stared at his father, gradually realizing that his father's eyes were not gleaming insanely. Indeed, he now perceived that they were looking at him, curiously proud and most curiously diffident.

“I don't understand—” began Tommy, with an impatient shake of the head.

“And you never will, my son,” interrupted Mr. Leigh, gently. “I pray God you never will!”

The words were so incomprehensible that Tommy asked, excitedly:

“Father, won't you please tell me about the money? Was it yours or the bank's; and what—”

“Mine—in the bank. Did you think it was not mine, Thomas?” The old man looked at his son, and Tommy could see neither reproach nor accusation in his father's eyes.

“What else could I think?” said Tommy. “What else have I thought—”

Mr. Leigh held up a hand to check his son's speech.

“Wait! Remember my exact words. When I told you what my salary from the bank was and how you had cost me seventeen thousand dollars, you asked me how I did it.”

“Yes. And you said—”

“Wait! I asked you in return what an old and trusted bank employee usually did when he spent more than he received from the bank.”

“Yes; but you knew I naturally understood—”

“Wait! You assumed, as you say, naturally, that I had taken the money from the bank.”

“What else—”

“That I had stolen the money?”

“What else could I think when you—”

“Wait! And so, my son, all these months in Dayton your thought was that you were the son of a thief?”

“There was no other—” began Tommy, with an impersonal indignation that rang in his voice.

“Wait! I have another question to ask you, Thomas. All these months, have you loved that thief?” Mr. Leigh looked at Tommy with eyes so fiercely hungry that Tommy answered very quickly:

“Of course I did.” Then he added, huskily: “Sure thing, daddy. But it was—”

“Wait!” interrupted Mr. Leigh, very sternly now. “Since we are talking on this subject you might as well hear me out. God bless you, my son, for that love. I can tell you now what I feared I might never be able to tell you. I can tell you, because you loved me when I was not worthy of your love.” There was a pause. Then Mr. Leigh looked at Tommy unflinchingly and said, “Thomas, you are the son of a thief!”

The world once more crashed down about Tommy's head. His breath failed him. Darkness came. But as a stricken man might say it, with his last breath, Tommy said:

“I don't care! You are my father—”

“I am your father, yes,” said Mr. Leigh, gravely. “And for that reason, in order that you may live your own life wisely, I should like to tell you all. Will you listen patiently, my son, while I make my confession?”

In his father's voice Tommy detected a pleading note that went to his heart and increased the boy's agony.

“Yes, father,” said Tommy Leigh, wearily, “I'll listen.”

“My son, I loved your mother as I pray you may love your wife. But I loved you also—as she did—even before you came to us, her love compelling mine. And when she went from us, my son, I did not follow her, because my love for her, which had not died, made me live in order that I might do as she had planned for me to do—devote my life to my son, who also was hers. In you she lived and I lived, feeling her near me. You will not understand this, my son; you cannot, having no sons—not having one son who meant so much more to me than merely my son—her son! No, you cannot understand.”

Mr. Leigh looked meditatively at his son and shook his head, slowly. But Tommy said:

“Yes, I can, dad!”

“No, my son, for in you I saw the accomplishment of her desires, the fulfilment of her wishes. It meant life—the opportunity for my love to continue to be what it always was; not a withered flower on her grave, Thomas, but a blossom perennially fresh! Through you I could talk to her in the one language that I knew she would hear and would understand. And so all my thoughts were of her because they were all of you—as hers had been, my son, long before her eyes had seen your baby face; as they doubtless are this minute!” The old man rose abruptly, walked to the window and stared out of it a long time, his arms folded tightly across his breast. And Tommy, feeling within his inmost soul the reverberation of the words he had heard, sat there, his soul awestruck by the intensity of his own feelings; the words that regrouped themselves into phrases that sounded unreal—not stilted, but unreal, as though no living man could utter them with living lips.

And then Tommy realized that the father to whom he had felt it his duty to be loyal was not the man who had spoken in the voice and in the language of a man from another world. Therefore, it was plain to Tommy now that he had not loved his father with a true instinct, but rather from the force of convention and habit. And this growing conviction gave to Tommy an uncomfortable sense of aloofness from real love, not entirely of his own making, but for which he was responsible. Real love would have divined such a love as this.

“Father!” cried Tommy, and approached the old man, who was staring out of the window, unseeingly.

Mr. Leigh turned, and Tommy saw that his face was composed. The pallor was still there, but it did not have quite the same unhealthy aspect. And when Mr. Leigh motioned him to a chair Tommy perceived that he wished to say more and say it calmly. So Tommy sat down and tried to look calm. But the smile on the boy's lips was not so encouraging as he meant it to be by reason of the tremulousness of the lips. The old man sat beside him and spoke gently.

“At the bank my thoughts were only of the close of day when I could talk to your mother—through you, my son. I made mistakes in my work and was reproved—and forgiven by the president, who had known her and knew what she had been to me. And as you grew older and the time drew nearer for carrying out the plans she had formed for your upbringing, I realized suddenly the danger that confronted both you and me, a danger so insidious and withal so great that it unnerved me. And that danger, my son, was my love for you.”

He paused and frowned. He nodded to himself grimly, at the recollection of the danger. But when he looked at his son's face, he ceased to frown and went on, earnestly, as if he would not only explain, but defend himself.

“That love, I saw clearly, could make me false to her as well as to you, and, therefore, to myself. I saw that I was bound to be the greatest sufferer, for my punishment would be a regret more bitter than death. But when I realized it I asked her to understand why I would do what I must do to save you from me. That was, my boy, to keep my love for you under control—a thing impossible to all but a man who loved, as I did, two in one. You were four years old at the time and cannot remember, but I spoke to you. I asked you to become the telephone through which I might speak to your mother, who was in heaven, waiting for both of us. You were very glad, I remember, and I held your hand to my ear and I whispered to you to tell her that I would keep my promise to her. You repeated the words after me. And—and—I kept my promise, my son!”

The old man nodded to himself, oblivious of his big son's presence, as Tommy could see. The boy's hand reached for his father's and the old man clutched it tightly.

“Have—have you understood so far, my boy?” he asked, softly.

“Yes, dad. And I can't tell you how I feel—as if I had never loved you before. But now—”

“Wait until you have heard all,” commanded Mr. Leigh.

“No matter what you did—” began Tommy, firmly.

“Wait! So that very day I changed my outward attitude toward you. You will never know what I suffered when I moved your crib and made you sleep in your own room, you who had never been away from my side a moment in this house. You asked me why, and I told you that you were a big man now and must be brave and sleep in your own bed in your own room, like a man. And you agreed—so bravely, my boy! And I told you that thereafter we must shake hands when we said good night, knowing that if I kissed you I could not let you go! I never kissed you good night after that—always shook hands. But before I wait to bed, when you were asleep, I would go to your little bed and I'd bend down and put my lips as close to your cheek as I could without touching it—to learn to be undemonstrative in my affection.” The old man ceased to talk, looked up suddenly, and said, grimly, “I am telling this so that you may understand what follows.”

“I don't care what follows,” cried Tommy. “No matter what you did—”

“Wait! So I began to acquire self-control by teaching myself to be undemonstrative, and I succeeded. But as the time came for me to begin to think of your boarding-school I saw an insurmountable obstacle in the way of keeping my promise to your mother. She had picked out expensive schools that had grown even more expensive. I had no money, but I resolved that you should go, no matter how or where I got the money. My salary would not enable me to do it, so the problem was how to get the money. I couldn't see how I could get it by working harder, and I could not obtain a better position. I knew there was much money in the world, and while brooding on how little I had I decided that if I couldn't get it in any other way I would take it from the bank. I needed very little, and, moreover, it was not for myself. Oh yes,” said the old man, wearily, “I fought against it—fought not so much against my conscience as against my love for your mother and my love for you; and both urged me to disregard my inhibitions. It was love, not envy or greed, that made me decide to take the money from the bank. I did not seek self-extenuation. I rejected cowardly compromises. I did not tell myself that I would borrow the money. I would take it and pay for your education. Beyond that there was no need to think. I feared your mother would not approve, but I did not talk to her about that—only that you would have what she had always wished you to have. But my concern was to insure the payment of your bills for ten years. I did not wish to steal a large sum and run away, because then I could not live in this house where she had lived with me. So I must successfully cover my operations over several years. By not thinking of it as a crime I was able to think exclusively of how to do it without danger of detection.”

The old man paused. When he went on it was more calmly. “It was a difficult and complicated problem, one of the hardest that I have ever faced, but in time I found how I could solve it. I went over my solution methodically and painstakingly, checking up every possible contingency, until I knew it was perfect. The accumulated wisdom and experience of generations of experts had gone to providing safeguards, but I saw how human ingenuity, directed by love, could foil human ingenuity when directed merely by the desire to retain possession. And at last, knowing that your education would be fully provided for by my action, I made up my mind to take the money from the bank when the time came.”

Mr. Leigh paused. Then, speaking very slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Tommy's, he went on: “And so, my son, that I might keep my promise to her, that you might have what she had wished you to have and what I wished you to have because she had wished it, I lost all sense of right and wrong as men understand it, I sloughed off my inhibitions and forgot the teachings of God—and I stole the money I needed! I was a thief!”

“But did you—” began Tommy, tremblingly.

“I became a thief,” interrupted Mr. Leigh, sternly, “when I decided to steal, with my eyes wide open to the consequences and my heart full of joy over being able to give you what I wished. Therefore, you are the son of a thief, even though the thief didn't physically steal the money.”

“You didn't?” cried Tommy, chokingly.

“My son, if my mind was the mind of a thief and my heart was the heart of a thief, am I not guilty of having been a thief?”

“No!” shouted Tommy, very loudly.

“Oh yes! My pocket did not hold the stolen money. But my heart held the sin—”

“Nonsense!” cried Tommy. “Your heart held only love.”

“And theft!” And Mr. Leigh nodded to himself, affirmatively.

“Very well. If you are a thief I am one, too.”

“No, Thomas. Being a boy, with a boy's mind and a boy's fears, you are assuring yourself that technically you are not the son of a thief. You are beyond the reach of the law of the land, but I am none the less a thief. I tell you I took two thousand dollars a year from the bank for ten years, undetected. I stole it and was glad of it to the extent that I had made detection humanly impossible. I never”—and Mr. Leigh smiled, grimly—“went so far as to feel an artist's pride over my exploit. Indeed, at times I rather regretted the necessity of violating the trust reposed in me, for without that trust all my cleverness would have availed nothing. But I tell you that money was in my pocket. I felt it there for many, many years. Your father was a thief as surely as if a jury had found him guilty.”

“And if a jury did his son wouldn't,” said Tommy, eagerly. “And if anybody calls me the son of a thief I'll admit it—with pride!”

“Boy, boy, you do not understand,” said Mr.

Leigh, in a low voice. “You cannot know what it cost me. But I do not begrudge the cost!”

“That's what you said, that made me so certain that you had—” Tommy checked himself abruptly.

“That I had stolen the money? Well, I did, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, firmly.

Tommy smiled forgivingly and said, “Tell me now how you did not steal the money that you spent on me, won't you?”

“Well, when I saw how, without being discovered, I could take the money, as soon as I was ready I studied in turn the bank's problem—how to make it impossible for anybody to steal money; and I found a way of preventing not only my theft, but other thefts by other people in other positions. And then, because I wondered why people studied so hard how to make money and so little how to keep it, I began to study how to make it. I analyzed some of the bank's most profitable deals and the operations of our most successful financiers. I saw what capital with brains could do alone; and then what capital without brains, and then what brains without capital could do. I found it was not difficult for brains to make money the moment capital was made aware of the existence of brains.

“Then I studied opportunities—and found them. So I went to the president, who was a personal friend, but too busy to remember personal friends except in his private office, and had a long talk with him. A special position was made for me. I changed our system of accounts, introduced methods and checks that are now in use in nearly all the big banks, and I became an adviser in certain deals. It seems I had some gifts in that direction, my son, peculiar to myself and therefore, I feared, not transmissible to my son. And—well, I made much more than I had intended to steal; and made it much more easily. But I kept my nominal salary from the bank exactly what it had been, twenty-five hundred dollars a year, that I might continue to be an old and trusted employee—to remind me of what I might have been! It was not hard to make money. I studied money-making in order not to want to kiss you—you were about eight then—and I devoted myself to evolving financial plans for a certain group of capitalists associated with our bank. It was the only way in which I could love you with safety to myself and to you. But I prospered so much that I brought upon your head and mine a second danger, far greater than the love of a father; who, though too weak to refuse you anything, was too poor to give you the easiest way to perdition.” The old man looked sternly at his son. “It was the danger of being the son of a rich man—the same man, but rich!”

“And is that why at college you always sent what I asked for?”

“I couldn't help sending you what you asked me for. The moment you asked I had to send it, my son. But my salvation lay in realizing my helplessness. I kept close tabs on you at college through friends you could not suspect, and because the reports were not alarming I did not disturb you. I merely fought against my desire to give you more than you asked for, to give you what I could easily afford to give you, what would have given me pleasure to do by giving pleasure to you. I fought that desire—and wrote to you about your studies and never mentioned money, for I did not wish to lie to you. Do you know why, after you were twelve, you didn't spend your vacation with me? Because I knew that if you did I could never let you go away from me, and I knew you must go back to the school your mother had picked out for you. I wanted to give you tutors, to keep you at home; and that would not have been good for you and I should have broken my promise. I knew if I let myself go I'd be lost forever.”

Mr. Leigh's lips, which he tried to compress, were quivering. Then he tried to smile, reassuringly, to convince his son that he had not let himself go after all.

The old man drew in a deep breath and said, with a pitiful attempt at playfulness: “That is why I called you Thomas, always Thomas. Now that you are a man you are Thomas. But you never will know how Thomas sounded to me when you were ten! When I heard other people call you Tommy I envied them, for I didn't dare! I didn't dare!”

Tommy irrepressibly rose from his chair and stood beside his father, who thereupon rose. And Tommy threw his arms about his father, as a boy does when he seeks the comfort of his mother's love.

“Dad! Dad! Poor dad!”

“Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!” muttered Mr. Leigh, brokenly. “You are a man now and I can't spoil you by calling you Tommy! I can't can I? My son! Oh, my son, Tommy!”

“You can call me anything you please,” said Tommy, brokenly, “so long as you call me your son.” Tommy was patting the old man's heaving shoulders protectingly. “It's all right, dad.” Then Tommy, he knew not why, said: “Call me anything, father! You don't know how much I love you!”

“Let us be men, my son,” said Mr. Leigh, disengaging Tommy's arms from about his neck. “Sit down and let us finish our business.”

Mr. Leigh sat down. His hands were trembling, and his face was wet with tears.

“Daddy, you must not lose your grip like that. It's all right,” said Tommy, brokenly, unaware that his own face was wet.

“After all these years,” muttered Mr. Leigh, “I—I couldn't help it, Thomas—Tommy boy.” His eyes were moist with tears and very bright with a feverish excitement. “Well, let us finish. While I had taken pains never to let you know I was a rich man—I am not really very rich—I had never spoken to you about a profession. You did not show a special liking for any, and after your graduation the decision as to what you should do with your life confronted me. I wasn't interested in your business success, but it seemed to me that you ought to do more than merely take care of what I should leave you. I knew that, barring accidents, I should live until you were old enough to become the sort of man you would be after I died.

“I didn't want you an idler, not even a nice, decent idler with gentlemanly manners and harmless hobbies. And there was also the danger that a rich man's son might become what so many nice boys have become, not entirely through any fault of their own or even of their parents, but from not having something useful to do. I wanted to see you become a man. I wanted you to have all the advantages of a boy who has his own way to make, and I didn't know how. I could not make any argument of mine convincing enough to myself to induce you to act as though you were penniless. I didn't wish to make poverty your spur, but I wanted you to be a poor boy, without my having to refuse you money when I had so much that I craved to give you if only I could give it safely! So I studied my problem as I do any business problem. I must do what should bring out what was best and manliest in you; something to prove whether you were pure gold or merely yellow.

“So—I—I tested you, my son—an awful test almost beyond my strength. You will forgive me if I have embittered some months of your life. But I suffered more than you—much more, Tommy! Suffered from your absence, for I saw that you were a man the moment I saw how you took my—my confession that dreadful morning. But you were a rich man's son and I had to save you from your own father! The love that had made me a thief might easily make me a fool!” Tommy shook his head, but his father continued: “Every time you sent me those remittances from Dayton—Tommy, Tommy, they nearly killed me! But I allowed you to think that you were the son of a thief and that you had to make good my crime, knowing that if you behaved like a man then, you would be a man after you discovered that you did not have to pay back that money. And you are a man, aren't you, Tommy?”

Tommy was conscious of a feeling of relief so great, of a new love so strong, of a gratitude so deep and a happiness so all-pervading, that there was no room for regret over what he had gone through when the secret held a flaming sword over his bare head. Then came poignant remorse that he had never even dimly realized how great was this love of which his father had spoken. A man's soul had been bared utterly before Tommy's gaze—a thing no man can do except under the compulsion of a love unutterably great. Something was due to that man and the naked soul of him.

“Father,” said Tommy, bravely confessing his own misdeed, “I want to tell you one thing. It may hurt you, but I want you to know it. I never loved you before. I don't think I was really your son until to-day.”

“Oh yes, you were,” said Mr. Leigh, hastily. “Yes, you were—my son and your mother's! And now I can talk to you about her as much as I wish. I had not dared before. But tell me—what about Dayton? Are you going back?”

Tommy for the first time realized that he was a rich man's son. There was no need to pay back the seventeen thousand dollars. There was no need to work for wages. But—well, his father would decide and he would do whatever his father wished. He owed it to his father.

“I don't know. What do you want me to do, dad?”

Mr. Leigh could not help seeing Tommy's loving loyalty.

“What do you wish to do, my son?” he asked, eagerly.

“Whatever you say,” answered Tommy, firmly.

“No! No!” Mr. Leigh shook his head violently. “It is for you to decide, Thomas.” Then he began to snap his fingers, nervously.

“Well, dad,” said Tommy, slowly, “now that I have found you I don't want to leave you, somehow.”

“Don't you, Tommy?” cried the old man, eagerly. He rose and approached his son with outstretched hands. “Don't you really?”

Tommy saw his father's quivering hands and the light of a great love in his eyes.

“I certainly do not! But—” He shook his head.

“But what?” asked Mr. Leigh, halting suddenly. “Well, I think I ought to go back to Dayton.” Tommy thought of the shop, thought of how he might accomplish what Thompson had wanted him to do, what he now could accomplish far more easily. “There's work there that I want to do, dad, and—”

“And what?”

“Well, I want to do it. It's a man's job, and I need not think of the money now, but give myself up to it. But why can't you come with me?” He brightened happily. “How about it?”

But Mr. Leigh said, slowly: “Do you want to go back to Dayton?”

“I do and I don't. I want to be with you and I want to be in Dayton.”

“But you will go to Dayton?”

“After awhile, if—if you'll let me.”

Mr. Leigh's lips came together firmly as if he would force himself to be silent.

“I do not begrudge the cost, my son!” said Mr. Leigh, in a voice that rang with gratitude. “I am very happy, for if you had not been what you are—”

“Dinner is ready, sorr,” announced Maggie. “Come on, dad,” said Tommy, taking his father's arm in his and finding great comfort in feeling it so near him.

But Mr. Leigh disengaged his arm gently.

“My son, will you invite me to dine with you at your club? You are a man now, and safe, and—and—I should like to be your guest before you go back to Dayton!”

THE END