I can inform you of this now because I have won my fight against the thing which would have stripped me of my manhood. And I want to make clear the point that it was you, father, who showed me the way, who made me realize to what depths I had gone. I am very humble, for I know the powers that rule men. When I left New York there was little in me to interest you, but I am making bold enough to tell you of the greatest thing in my life. I have won the love of a good woman. We are to be married here the twentieth, and some day I will want to bring her East with me. I hope you will want to see her. Your son, Danny. While the hand of the big clock made a quarter circle the man sat inert in his chair; limp, weak in body, spirit, and mind, whipped by the bitterest lashes that human mind can conjure. Then he raised his chin from his breast and rested his head against the back of the chair, while his hands hung loose at his sides. His lips moved. "Hope--you will want to see her," he repeated in a whisper. A pause, and again words: "He wouldn't even ask me--wouldn't dream I wanted to--be there!" An old man, you would have said, old and broken. The snap, the precision that had been his outstanding characteristic, was gone. But not for long. The change came before the whispering had well died; the lines of purpose, of decision, returned to his face, his arms ceased to hang limp, the look in the eyes--none the less warm--became definite, focused. Suddenly Daniel Lenox sat erect and raised the letter to the light once more. "The twentieth!" he muttered. "And this is--" Another train fumed at the distances, left cities behind, and crawled on across prairies to mountain ranges. As it progressed, dispatchers, one after another, sat farther forward in their chairs and the alert keenness of their expression grew a trifle sharper. For the Lenox Special, New York to Colt, Colorado, invited disaster with every mile of its frantic rush across country. Freights, passenger trains, even the widely advertised limiteds, edged off the tracks to let it shriek on unhampered. In the swaying private car sat the man who had caused all this disarray of otherwise neat schedules. At regular, short intervals his hand traveled to watch-pocket and his blue eyes scrutinized the dial of his timepiece as though to detect a lie in the sharp, frank characters. In the other hand, much of the time, were held sheets of limp paper. They had been folded and smoothed out again so many times and, though he was an old man and one who thought mostly in figures, fondled so much, that the ink on them was all but obliterated in places. He read and reread what was written there as the train tore over the miles, and as he read the great warmth came back to his eyes. With it, at times, a fear came. When fear was there, he tugged at his watch again.