"You want to amount to something?" continued McComas, pausing on the edge of an invidious bit of characterization. "Of course." "You would like to come with me?" "Yes." Surely his own father could not help him to a future. "Well, take your choice. What do you want? Bank?" But Albert had heard something about banks. Bank clerks, in these close-knit days, when anybody who fell out of the lock-step was lost, were but a sort of financial militia. Even if he were pushed along with the friendliest zeal, it might be years before he reached the place and the end desired. Nor had he much more fondness for growing up under the eye of McComas than under that of his own father. "Bank?" repeated McComas. "No." McComas grinned. It was the grin he used when greatly pleased. "One of those Western concerns?" "Yes," said Albert; "send me West." When Raymond heard that Albert had cast in his lot with McComas and meant soon to leave for Colorado, he winced. Albert, to him, was still a boy, and this term in the West but another kind of schooling. "Just as his mother tried to influence him before," said Raymond to me bitterly, "so McComas will influence him now." And I could not deny that McComas had the whip hand. The unintermittency of business correspondence, the cogency of a place on the payroll.... No, it was not to be denied that Raymond had lost Albert finally. And Althea went to the train, to see him off--as to another war. V "Finally"--perhaps I have used the word too soon. I dropped in on Raymond, one evening, at his private hotel. It was about four months after Albert's departure for the West. His quarters seemed as snugly comfortable as ever, and as completely adapted to his ultimately discovered personality and its peculiar requirements. Raymond master of a big house! Raymond leading a public life! But he himself was perturbed. It was a letter from Albert--it was two or three letters, in fact. "He says he is going to marry her." "Her?" "Althea. Althea McComas." Albert, in the West, had done well. He had taken hold immediately, decisively. The initiative which would never have developed under his father had been liberated during his war service and was now mounting to a still higher pitch among the mountains. "He is going to do," McComas had told me, after the second month. "He is a wonder," he had said, later. Be that as it may. McComas was doubtless inclined to the favorable view. He had determined in advance that Albert was to succeed. Albert was meeting, successfully, known expectations of success--as a young man may. "He started so well," said his father. "And now...." "And now?" "Now he wants to marry the daughter of a stable-boy!" "Raymond," I said; "drop the 'stable-boy.' That was never true; and if it were it would have no relevancy here and now." "I should say not! Why, Albert--" "You have told him? He knows your--He knows the--the legend?" "He does. And as you see, it makes no difference to him."