"Ah, well, it's no matter." Anthony stood, cutting at his boot-leg with a riding-whip, and gazing about the silent counting-room. He thought of what this house once had been, and of what it now had come to; he thought of Charles as he had seen him that morning, smiling, childlike, engaged in meaningless pastimes. His breath grew tight in his chest, and he turned, about to go. "The wagon, I suppose," said Tom Horn, "is already beyond the river, laden with your goods?" "Yes," said Anthony, "and will start across the Jerseys as soon as I reach it. Good-by." "Good-by," said Tom Horn. He reached into his high desk and produced a long pistol, carefully oiled and polished. "Take this and keep it by you," said he. "The place you are going to is an unfrequented one; and in such places unexpected things are sometimes met." Anthony took the weapon and stood regarding the man for a moment. "Thank you," said he. And again, "Good-by." He went out, mounted his waiting horse, and rode away toward the ferry at the foot of High Street; and Tom Horn stood in the counting-house door, gazing after him until he had disappeared. XXXIV To one who did not know Tom Horn very well, his manner and his occupations, after Anthony left the city, did not change. He still arose and was abroad while the dawn was touching the river and took his breakfast standing at the bar of the Boatswain-and-Call. Then through Water Street, freshly awakened; with a great copper key he'd open the counting-room door at Rufus Stevens' Sons; it was dusty and silent, for but a trickle of trade ran through it now; but Tom would gravely take off his coat and hang it away; then he'd put on a worn jacket, mount his high stool, and the day had begun. But what was this scrawling of figures on bits of paper? What was this endless computing and calculating and balancing of facts? As the day wore on he would be surrounded by these fragments, each bearing a mysterious statement; and his mind seemed laboring with some dimly seen thing. He descended into vast pits of speculation and emerged with fresh figures to be worked into new results. But that was not all; in the midst of these calculations he'd be seized with fits of bodily activity; he'd get down from his stool, put on his coat and his tall, shabby hat, and hurry out, locking the door behind him. And these errands always had to do with wind and weather; ships and shipmen also took their places in his interests, as did tides and changes of the moon, and wrecks and loss, and bitter news. Steeped in these he'd hurry back to the silent counting-room; then more figures, more descents into the pit, more reveries, more striving toward the thing sensed so clearly but so dimly seen. Of a night, after he had taken his supper and read the "Gazette" at the tavern, he'd make his way to Christopher Dent's; the two would sit with the window open and the evening air stirring in the room, and they'd talk.