"Ah, George! you don't, you can't know," he said, "yet my heart is not so dead but that I feel and recognize the spirit in which you speak. My place is here, right here, and I should not be contented anywhere else. But you are just from your studies. You didn't dazzle the faculty by your performances. Perhaps they would say you were a little too much given to boating and that sort of thing. But I am satisfied that you have come home a man, and not a blue-spectacled milk-sop. Help me out a little, and then go off on your lark yourself and recuperate." "Recuperate!" and the young fellow made the office ring with his laugh. "Feel of that muscle, old gentleman. All the recuperation I need I can get a few hours before and after sundown. I'll go now, however, for there's a spanking breeze on the bay, and I'd like to make a run around Fort Sumter." "George, George, be prudent. You know that your brother lies at the bottom of that accursed bay." "There, father, there, he died doing his duty like a man, and you mustn't grieve for him so. Good-by." The old man looked wistfully after him a moment, then turned his mind, like a strong motor power, to the complicated machinery that was coining wealth. George went to Bodine, whom he had never seen before, and of whom he knew nothing, and began in his half-boyish way: "Here, mine ancient, father wants--Beg your pardon. Didn't know that you had lost a leg." "What is it that Mr. Houghton wishes?" said the captain coldly, and turning upon the young man a visage which impressed him instantly. "I beg your pardon again," said George. "My father would like copies made of these letters;" and he touched his hat as he turned away. "Thunder!" he muttered as he left the counting-house. "I was told that I was a gentleman for a little trumpery act in the street. That man tells you he is one by a single glance from his sad, stern eyes. He is another of the blue-bloods, Southerner to the backbone. How is it that he is in the old gentleman's employ, I wonder? I supposed father hated ex-Confederates as the Devil does holy water. Bodine, Bodine. I must find out who he is, for he evidently has a history." He soon forgot all about Bodine in the pleasure of skilfully sailing his boat close to the wind.