It was true that the girl came of stock that the Griffin could not tolerate. The man who had brought her up as his own and who, in dying, left her portionless, had been one the Griffin hated--and he was a good hater. To put forth a command and find his son as unbendable as cast iron to his will, had utterly enraged him. He had threatened dismissal from house and fortune. Joe had coolly taken him at his word. It was maddening. But the matter might have been eased over. The boy was not then married. And for his mother's sake the Griffin would have gone far on the road to a better understanding. Then came the discovery of the missing ten thousand dollars. As he had so fiercely told Carolyn's father, that ended all hope of reconciliation. Yet he could not tell the boy's mother about it. Their son a thief? Better to bear her frequent complaints and accusations of harshness to the boy, than to tell the mother who bore him that he had turned out a thief. So this man, who commanded men and gold and affairs, and who was a vast power in the financial world, was not happy. He worked as he always had; but he worked without an object in view--for the mere sake of working. He often told his wife that he "hung on because he couldn't let go," like a drowning man to a rope. Money, power, notoriety--all, all were Dead Sea fruit. There was nobody to enjoy it after him, for he had spent much to make it legally impossible for a _thief_ ever to benefit by his or his wife's death. He walked on the beach with the prattling Carolyn and remembered it all. It was a mile and a half to the foot of the path up the bluff behind the Ball cottage; but they were not long on the smooth way. Late in the afternoon as it was, Molly Ball's boarders were still on the beach. "Oh, there's Mamma Cameron!" cried Carolyn May. "And the baby and his mamma." She broke away from her friend to run with Prince to her mother. Baby Laird lay upon his mother's lap where she sat on a weed-covered rock. Her back was to the man as he approached. All he saw was the graceful curve of her shoulder and the aureole of red-gold hair surrounding the head that bent so lovingly from the slender neck above the baby. The man halted. Curious as he was about these people, he hesitated to force himself upon them. If the Lairds did not wish to be befriended by him or by his wife, the situation would be made rather difficult if he approached them unbidden. He had never been able to understand why that twenty dollar bill was sent back to him with the brusque note accompanying it. With his usual suspicion of all mankind, at the time he had presumed the woman and her husband, whose baby go-cart had been wrecked, planned to begin suit for damages. When nothing like that happened, and when, later, he discovered those same people were these whom he was willing to help at his wife's request, his interest was further aroused.