"Read this over," said Barclay at length. "You will see," he added, as he handed Brownwell the unfolded sheets, "that I have made it clear that if you refuse to sign our notes, General Hendricks will be compelled to close the bank, and that the examination which will follow will send him to prison and jeopardize Bob, who has signed a lot of improper notes there to cover our transactions, and that in the crash Colonel Culpepper will lose all he has, including the roof over his head--if you refuse to help us." ("However," snarled Barclay, at his conscience, "I've only told the truth; for if you take your money and go and shut down on the colonel, it would make him a pauper.") With a flourishing crescendo finale Adrian Brownwell entered the dark stairway and went down into the street. Barclay turned quickly to his work as if to avoid meditation. The scratch of his pen and the murmur of the water on the roof grew louder and louder as the evening waxed old. And out on the hill, out on Lincoln Avenue, the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house--that stately house of a father's pride and-- At ten o'clock John Barclay heard a light footstep and a rattling cane upon the stair, and Brownwell, a human whirligig of gay gestures, came tripping into the room. "A pen, a pen,"--he cried, "my kingdom for a pen." He was tugging at his gloves as he spoke, and in the clatter that he made, Barclay found the blank note and pushed it toward the table's edge to Brownwell, who put his ornate copy-book signature upon it with a flourish. When he had gone, Barclay wrote a note to Jane telling her of Molly's engagement to Brownwell, and then he sat posting his books, and figuring up his accounts. It was after midnight when he limped down the stairs, and the rain had ceased. But a biting wind like a cruel fate came out of the north, and he hurried through the deserted street, under lowering clouds that scurried madly across the stars. But John Barclay could not look up at the stars, he broke into a limping run and head downward plunged into the gale. And never in all his life could he take a square look at Molly Culpepper's diamond ring.