Johnathan never thought of them but what he grew angry, even in his exile. What he had suffered from that boy—his crazy ideas, his impertinence—his insolence, his refusal to “go into conference” with his father for the good of the business—his hot-headed, know-it-all, don’t-give-a-damn attitude toward the one in all the world who had done so much for him! How had the father ever “stuck them out”—those years? But he had stuck them out. And he had only left the whole miserable mess when it was self-evident that the unnatural son’s bigotry and business inability were going to pile his beautiful business on the rocks at last. That was only the first law of nature,—self-preservation. Even rats desert a sinking ship, and how much more sensible and intelligent should grown men show themselves than rats! Yet what had he taken from that business that was not due him? That was not his own? He had sold his five-thousand-dollar concern for thirteen thousand dollars. Very good! All he had withdrawn at the last was ten thousand dollars. Not a penny more; ten thousand dollars! Three thousand less than the value of his stock. And to show he had no criminal intent, he had duly made out and endorsed his certificates back to the company—back to the corporation’s treasurer—and left them on Nathan’s desk for transfer. Very good, then! He had simply decided he would rather have his money than the stock and made the swap. Nothing crooked about that! If he had carried away the certificates with him and the money—ah, then he would be a criminal in sight of God and man. But he had simply been shrewd. If his boy was so tarnation smart, let him sell the father’s stock to some one about the village and use the money to reimburse the company for what Johnathan had taken. That the “Board of Directors” had not sanctioned such a purchase from the treasury was nothing to Johnathan. Who were the “Board” but Nathan and Charley Newton and Peter Whipple of the Process Works and one or two others? They never would have understood Johnathan’s domestic position anyhow, or appreciated why he should want to leave home forever. How could they know the indignities and quarrels which had been his portion for twenty-five dreary years? What was the mere technicality of recording such a transfer on the books, anyway? If he had told them first, they would only have objected; and he would have had to hold a meeting and use his stock-control to club them into it. That would have aroused the banks and “pulled down the temple,” making the stock worthless. No, Johnathan had only exercised ordinary Yankee shrewdness. And yet—— The great, bothersome, indefatigable fact remained that the banks and Paris investors would never see the deal in the light in which Johnathan saw it himself. He could not go home! Not that he wanted to go home, of course. But still, he could not go home. And it bothered him.