Mr. Horace Boyce returned to Thessaly the next morning and drove at once to his father’s house. There, after a longer and more luxurious bath than usual, he breakfasted at his leisure, and then shaved and dressed himself with great care. He had brought some new clothes from New York, and as he put them on he did not regret the long detour to the metropolis, both in going to and coming from Pittsburg, which had been made in order to secure them. The frock coat was peculiarly to his liking. No noble dandy in all the West End of London owed his tailor for a more perfectly fitting garment. It was not easy to decide as to the neckwear which should best set off the admirable upper lines of this coat, but at last he settled on a lustreless, fine-ribbed tie of white silk, into which he set a beautiful moonstone pin that Miss Kate had once praised. Decidedly, the ensemble left nothing to be desired.

Horace, having completely satisfied himself, took off the coat again, went down-stairs in his velveteen lounging-jacket, and sought out his father in the library, which served as a smoking-room for the two men.

The General sat in one chair, with his feet comfortably disposed on another, and with a cup of coffee on still a third at his side. He was reading that morning’s Thessaly Banner, through passing clouds of cigar-smoke. His brow was troubled.

“Hello, you’re back, are you?” was his greeting to his son. “I see the whole crowd of workmen in your rolling-mills decided last night not to submit to the new scale; unanimous, the paper says. Seen it?”

“No, but I guessed they would,” said Horace, nonchalantly. “They can all be damned.”

The General turned over his paper. “There’s an editorial,” he went on, “taking the workmen’s side, out and out. Says there’s something very mysterious about the whole business. Winds up with a hint that steps will be taken to test the legality of the trust, and probe the conspiracy that underlies it. Those are the words—‘probe the conspiracy.’ Evidently, you’re going to have John Fairchild in your wool. He’s a good fighter, once you get him stirred up.”

“He can be damned, too,” said Horace, taking a chair and lighting a cigar. “These free-trade editors make a lot of noise, but they don’t do anything else. They’re merely blue-bottle flies on a window-pane—a deuce of a nuisance to nervous people, that’s all. I’m not nervous, myself.”

The General smiled with good-humored sarcasm at his offspring. “Seems to me it wasn’t so long ago that you were tarred with the same brush yourself,” he commented.

“Most fellows are free-traders until it touches their own pockets, or rather until they get something in their pockets to be touched. Then they learn sense,” replied Horace.

“You can count them by thousands,” said the General. “But what of the other poor devils—the millions of consumers who pay through the nose, in order to keep those pockets full, eh? They never seem to learn sense.”

Horace smiled a little, and then stretched out his limbs in a comprehensive yawn. “I can’t sleep on the cars as well as I used to,” he said, in explanation. “I almost wish now I’d gone to bed when I got home. I don’t want to be sleepy this afternoon, of all times.”

The General had returned to his paper. “I see there’s a story afloat that you chaps mean to bring in French Canadian workmen, when the other fellows are locked out. I thought there was a contract labor law against that.”

Horace yawned again, and then, rising, poured out a little glassful of spirits from a bottle on the mantel, and tossed it off. “No,” he said, “it’s easy enough to get around that. Wendover is up to all those dodges. Besides, I think they are already domiciled in Massachusetts.”

“Vane” Boyce laid down the paper and took off his eye-glasses. “I hope these fellows haven’t got you into a scrape,” he remarked, eyeing his son. “I don’t more than half like this whole business.”

“Don’t you worry,” was Horace’s easy response.

“I’ll take good care of myself. If it comes to ‘dog eat dog,’ they’ll find my teeth are filed down to a point quite as sharp as theirs are.”

“Maybe so,” said the father, doubtfully. “But that Tenney—he’s got eyes in the back of his head.”

“My dear fellow,” said Horace, with a pleasant air of patronage, “he’s a mere child compared with Wendover. But I’m not afraid of them both. I’m going to play a card this afternoon that will take the wind out of both their sails. When that is done, I’ll be in a position to lay down the law to them, and read the riot act too, if necessary.”

The General looked inquiry, and Horace went on: “I want you to call for me at the office at three, and then we’ll go together to the Minsters. I wouldn’t smoke after luncheon, if I were you. I’m not going down until afternoon. I’ll explain to you what my idea is as we walk out there. You’ve got some ‘heavy father’ business to do.”

Horace lay at his ease for a couple of hours in the big chair his father had vacated, and mused upon the splendor of his position. This afternoon he was to ask Kate Minster to be his wife, and of the answer he had no earthly doubt. His place thus made secure, he had some highly interesting things to say to Wendover and Tenney. He had fathomed their plans, he thought, and could at the right moment turn them to his advantage. He had not paid this latest visit to the iron magnates of Pennsylvania for nothing. He saw that Wendover had counted upon their postponing all discussion of the compensation to be given the Minsters for the closing of their furnaces until after January 1, in order that when that date came, and Mrs. Minster had not the money to pay the half-yearly twelve thousand dollars interest on the bonds, she would be compelled to borrow still more from him, and thus tighten the hold which he and Tenney had on the Minster property. It was a pretty scheme, but Horace felt that he could block it. For one thing, he was certain that he could induce the outside trust directors to pass upon the question of compensation long before January. And even if this failed, he could himself raise the money which Mrs. Minster would need. This he would do. Then he would turn around and demand an accounting from these scoundrels of the four hundred thousand dollars employed in buying the machinery rights, and levy upon the plant of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company, if necessary, to secure Mrs. Minster’s interests. It became all very clear to his mind, now he thought it over, and he metaphorically snapped his fingers at Wendover and Tenney as he went up-stairs and once more carefully dressed himself.

The young man stopped in the hall-way as he came down and enjoyed a comprehensive view of himself in the large mirror which was framed by the hat-rack. The frock coat and the white effect at the neck were excellent. The heavy fur collar of the outer coat only heightened their beauty, and the soft, fawn-tinted suède gloves were quite as charming in the contrast they afforded under the cuffs of the same costly fur. Horace put his glossy hat just a trifle to one side, and was too happy even to curse the climate which made rubbers over his patent-leather shoes a necessity.

He remembered that minute before the looking-glass, in the after-time, as the culmination of his upward career. It was the proudest, most perfectly contented moment of his adult life.





“There is something I want to say to you before you go.”

Reuben Tracy stood at the door of a small inner office, and looked steadily at his partner as he uttered these words.

There was little doing in the law in these few dead-and-alive weeks between terms, and the exquisitely dressed Horace, having gone through his letters and signed some few papers, still with one of his gloves on, had decided not to wait for his father, but to call instead at the hardware store.

“I am in a bit of a hurry just now.” he said, drawing on the other glove. “I may look in again before dinner. Won’t it keep till then?”

“It isn’t very long,” answered Reuben. “I’ve concluded that the partnership was a mistake. It is open to either of us to terminate it at will. I wish you would look around, and let me know as soon as you see your way to—to—”

“To getting out,” interposed Horace. In his present mood the idea rather pleased him than otherwise. “With the greatest pleasure in the world. You have not been alone in thinking that the partnership was a mistake, I can assure you.”

“Then we understand each other?”

“Perfectly.”

“And you will be back, say at—”

“Say at half-past five.”

“Half-past five be it,” said Reuben, turning back again to his desk.

Horace made his way across the muddy high street and found his father, who smelt rather more of tobacco than could have been wished, but otherwise was in complete readiness.

“By the way,” remarked the young man, as the two walked briskly along, “I’ve given Tracy notice that I’m going to leave the firm. I daresay we shall separate almost immediately. The business hasn’t been by any means up to my expectations, and, besides, I have too much already to do for the Minster estate, and am by way, now, of having a good deal more.”

“I’m sorry, for all that,” said the General. “Tracy is a first-rate, honest, straightforward fellow. It always did me good to feel that you were with him. To tell you the truth, my boy,” he went on after a pause, “I’m damnably uneasy about your being so thick with Tenney and that gang, and separating yourself from Tracy. It has an unsafe look.”

“Tracy is a tiresome prig,” was Horace’s comment. “I’ve stood him quite long enough.”

The conversation turned now upon the object of their expedition, and when this had been explained to the General, and his part in it outlined, he had forgotten his forebodings about his son’s future.

That son himself, as he strode along, with his head well up............