"More like charity, with the Judge, but Uncle isn't holding him up for much this time. Uncle's getting on his feet. The Judge never expected him to, and I didn't, but the automobiles help. Maggie served tea before she went to Ward's, and he's going on with it. His luck has turned.

He's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the back interest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it into repairs--the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroom for a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. Then, next year----"

"We've heard too much about next year, Donovan."

"Don't get tragic, Theodore. This is a new proposition. I'll go into figures with the Judge and prove it to him--don't want to waste them on you. But he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he's done too many times. I'm as glad for him as I am for Uncle."

"It can't be done."

"Nonsense, Theodore. I won't wait to see the Judge now, but you tell him----"

"It don't make any difference what I tell him. The Judge has made up his mind, and he won't change it. You can take it from me as well as him.

You won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get another month's extension of time. We're done with you."

"I almost believe you mean that, Theodore."

"As I said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of the dignity of the firm we must protect ourselves----"

"I believe you mean it, and the Judge gave you authority to say it."

"We must go through the form of protecting ourselves and----"

His client laughed. "You don't mean the Judge wants to take over the house. That's 'Way Down East stuff. If money's tight with him, we'll pay the interest and manage some way, though I don't see how. But the house would be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if it was. I know the Judge. Don't let your imagination get away with you, Theodore."

"I'm sorry for you, Donovan."

"You think he's going to take it?"

"I know he is."

"You mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the Judge's authority for it, too."

"Take it quietly. It's the best way," urged the junior partner helpfully.

"I understand that's your motto, Theodore," said his client, and proceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the Judge's big chair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon the immaculate folds of Mr. Burr's turquoise-blue tie. He took the advice too literally. The silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if he found it so, Mr. Burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made up of irreproachable sentiments.

"This is hard on your uncle, Neil, and it's hard on you, but it may be the best thing in the end. He's been hiding behind you too long. A business that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. He can start new and start clean. The Judge has been a good friend to you----"

"Don't explain him to me. You don't own him, whoever else does,"

interrupted the Judge's protege softly.

"What do you mean? If you don't think you're getting a square deal, say so."

"Do you want me to weep on your shoulder, Theodore?"

"The Judge is your friend, and," Mr. Burr added handsomely, "I'm your friend, too."

His client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "Theodore, you don't want to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "No, I thought not. Well----"

"I'm your friend," repeated Mr. Burr, generously if irrelevantly, and this time without effect. His client had crossed the room without another glance at him, and had his hand on the k.n.o.b of the Judge's office door. His manner still had the composure which Mr. Burr had advocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his brown eyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. To imaginative eyes like Mr. Burr's he must have looked suddenly taller.

Mr. Burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder how long it had been forming, or why. He hurried after the boy and caught him fiercely if ineffectively by the arm.

"You can't go in there," stated Mr. Burr arbitrarily, all logic deserting him. "You can't. You don't know----"

"Oh, I'm not going to knife the Judge," his client explained kindly.

"I'm only going to find out what's back of this."

"Take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itself to Mr. Burr. Neil Donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply to it, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personality of the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes.

"Quietly? There's been too much of that in this town. I'm sick of it.

The only friend I've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes back on me for no reason at all, the first time I ask a favour of him that don't amount to picking his pockets. The only big man in this rotten town who's halfway straight since Everard turned the town rotten begins to act like he wasn't straight. What's back of it? I'm going to know.

Get out of my way, Theodore."

"You don't know who's in there."

"I don't care. I'm going to know." Disposing of the hovering and anxious intervention of Mr. Burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it in the pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of the sunshine into the Judge's dim little inner office.

The Judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the table near the one window, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papers between them, had every right to be there. They were the Judge and Colonel Everard.

The great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancing up at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over with his finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused, but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the Judge, who was peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of his gla.s.ses.

"I've got to speak to the Judge. I'm sorry."

He stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smouldering fires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed and rebellious youth. The great man regarded him indifferently for a minute and then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again.

"Judge, I've got to speak to you alone."

"You can't just now, son."

"I've got to."

"Why?"

The Judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue, near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, and rather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal to the race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. The boy stepped instinctively closer.

"I don't blame you, sir, but I've got to understand this and know what's behind it."

"Better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, Neil."

"Why did you go back on me?"

"You're taking a sentimental att.i.tude about a business matter. It's natural enough that you should. I'm sorry for you, son."

"Why----"

The Judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met the boy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial, peculiarly his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now.

"Neil," he said deliberately, "I've got nothing to say to you alone.

I've got nothing to say to you at all that Mr. Burr hasn't said. Is that quite clear to you?"