"What have I come back for? I've come back to stay, that's what I'm back for! I want a job, that's all, and if you won't give me one, I'd like to know just where your brotherly heart expects me to go." "You can't stay here, Jack. You've got to clear out. I don't mean to be hard on you, and I'll give you enough to take you wherever you want to go; but you can't camp here; you've got to move on. If you'd come back like a gentleman, it might have been different; but the whole town's upset. I'd just about lived you down, and here you come back and stir up the whole mess. The way you came back puts us all in the hole; the sympathy of the community was swinging round to our side a little, and even the Montgomerys were making it clear that they were willing to let bygones be bygones and here you come to spoil it all! And you've not only got to go, but you've got to go now, this very day by the first train." This was received blinkingly. Jack shook his head as though in pity for his brother's harshness. "For a man brought up by a Christian father and mother to point the door to a long-lost brother is painful, Will. It wounds me deeply. I tell you right now that I'm not going away from here until I get good and ready. Do you follow me?" He rested the tips of his fingers on the table and bent toward his brother with a cold glitter in his eyes. Under the mockery of his phrases a hot anger lurked. "All right," said William. "Stay, then. But you can't hang yourself around my neck. Understand that right here." "You haven't heard all my story yet--" "I've heard all I'm going to hear. I've heard enough to make me sick. I hope nobody else in this town will ever hear it. It's worse than I had ever imagined--you allowing that woman to support you! And it's nauseating to think that you don't realize the rottenness of it. But you seem to be incapable of any decent feeling about anything." "Stop sentimentalizing and listen to me. I didn't come back here to enter upon a new social career; I came back on business. You remember, Will, that Sam came West when you and he were selling bonds in this Sycamore Traction line on which I rode proudly home last night. I helped Sam sell a pretty big bunch of those bonds out there. Sam could sell anything--Sam was a wonder! and he planted a big bunch of those things along the coast--my friends, you know. Sam's dead and gone now and I ain't going to knock him--but Sam was an exuberant chap and he overcalculated the cost of building the road. That was on the construction company, but you and Sam were in that--same old game of working both sides of the street. It was just a mistake in figures, of course, but some of those people out there hear the road ain't doing well, and they're friends of mine, Will, valued friends, and now that Sam's gone it's up to you and me to take care of 'em--do you follow me?"