Plonny denied that he had any candidate. Under pressure, however, he admitted having his eye on a certain youth, a "dark horse" who was little known at present, but who, in his humble judgment, was a coming man. Plonny said that this man was very young just now, but would be plenty old enough before they would have need of him. Mr. Bangor once more winked at the six. "Why, Plonny, I thought you were rooting for Charles Gardenia West." "Then there's two of ye," said Plonny, dryly, "he being the other one." He removed his unlighted cigar, and spat loudly into a tall brass cuspidor, which he had taken the precaution to place for just such emergencies. "Meachy," said Plonny, slowly, "I wouldn't give the job of dog-catcher to a man you couldn't trust to stand by his friends." XXVIII _How Words can be like Blows, and Blue Eyes stab deep; how Queed sits by a Bedside and reviews his Life; and how a Thought leaps at him and will not down._ In the first crushing burst of revelation, Queed had had a wild impulse to wash his hands of everything, and fly. He would pack Surface off to a hospital; dispose of the house; escape back to Mrs. Paynter's; forget his terrible knowledge, and finally bury it with Surface. His reason fortified the impulse at every point. He owed less than nothing to his father; he had not the slightest responsibility either toward him or for him; to acknowledge the relation between them would do no conceivable good to anybody. He would go back to the Scriptorium, and all would be as it had been before. But when the moment came either to go or to stay, another and deeper impulse rose against this one, and beat it down. Within him a voice whispered that though he might go back to the Scriptorium, he would never be as he had been before. Whether he acknowledged the relation or not, it was still there. And, in time, his reason brought forth material to fortify this impulse, too: it came out in brief, grim sentences which burned themselves into his mind. Surface was his father. To deny the primal blood-tie was not honorable. The sins of the fathers descended to the children. To suppress Truth was the crowning blasphemy. Queed did not go. He stayed, resolved, after a violent struggle--it was all over in the first hour of his discovery--to bear his burden, shouldering everything that his sonship involved.