Then guilty Max knew that his uncle knew all. But indeed the old man had not suspected at the first. Only there had seemed to him something natural, which he could not understand, in the face of the handsome young conductor. But, as chance had ordered,--good luck, bad luck, let the reader say,--early the next morning, as he smoked his pipe before breakfast, he had walked into the paint-shop. Then he had stepped into the car. On the floor of the car he had found his wife's handkerchief, the loss of which she had deplored, and evident traces of birdseed from the cage. The old man was slow, but he was sure; and a few days of rapt meditation on these observations had brought him out on a result not far from true. "My son," he said, after Max had made confession, "if the business is all right, as you say, why do we not follow it in the daytime?" Max said that he did not like to expose Bertha to observation in the daytime. "But, my son, why do you not expose me to observation in the daytime? If it is all right, I will go down town with you. I will go now." Then Max said that, though it was all right according to the higher law, the local law had not yet been interpreted on this subject, and he was afraid the police would stop them. "Ah, well, I understand," said the old man. "Let them stop us; let us have one grand lawsuit, and let us settle it forever." Then Max explained, further, that he had no money for a lawsuit, and that before the suit was settled he should be penniless. "Ah, well," said Uncle Stephen, "and I--who have money enough--I never yet spent a kreutzer at law, and, God willing, I never will. But, my son, let me tell you. What we do, let us do in the light. At night let us play, let us go to the theatre, let us dance, let us sing. If this business is good business, let us do it by daylight. Come with me. Let us see your bureau man--what you call him--Obermeister, surintendant. Come!" And he hauled guilty Max with him in a rival's car to the down-town office of Mr. Beal, the superintendent. And then the End came. CHAPTER VII. THE END. Max and his uncle entered the office, and were ushered into Mr. Beal's private room. "Be seated, gentlemen--one moment;" and in a moment the tired man of affairs turned, with that uninterested bow, as if he knew they had nothing of any import to say. But when Max, man fashion, held up his head and entered squarely on his story, Mr. Beal colored and was all attention. A minute more, and Mr. Beal rose and closed the door, that he might be sure they were not heard. Indeed, he listened eagerly, and yet as if he did not wish Max to be proved in the wrong. "In short," said Max, at the end, "if what I have done is wrong, I have come to say that I do not want any fight with the company, and I should be glad to make amends." Strange to say, the man of affairs hardly seemed to heed him. Mr. Beal was already in a brown study.