“I’ll keep her,” his mother cried. “I’ll be as good as I know to her.” And his father echoed: “We’ll take care of her, Wint.” “You’re doing it because you want to,” Wint pleaded. “You don’t have to. I’ll stay anyway. But I--hope you’ll want to help her, anyway.” “Yes,” Chase said. “We’ll keep her--because we want to. Do what we can.” * * * * * But they were not to keep her very long, for Hetty’s time was near. It was decided that she should go to Columbus for a little while, returning to them in the fall. Wint wrote a check to cover her expenses. Hetty’s old sullenness had returned to her. She took the check without thanks, and tucked it away in her pocketbook. She was to go to the train alone, to avoid talk. The night of her going, Jack Routt met V. R. Kite, and took Kite to his office. And he told him certain things, an evil elation in his eyes. Told him in detail that which he had planned. Kite listened with eyes shining; and at the end he said: “He’ll deny it. What can you prove?” “This proves the whole thing,” said Routt triumphantly, and slid a slip of paper across the desk to Kite. Kite looked at it. A check, drawn by Winthrop Chase, Junior, to the order of Henrietta Morfee. The buzzard of a man banged his hard old fist upon the table. “By God, Routt!” he cried, “we win. We’ll skin that cub. We’ll hang his hide on the barn!” Routt reached into the drawer of his desk. “And that means,” he said, “that it’s time to have a drink. Say when?” END OF BOOK IV BOOK V DEFEAT CHAPTER I SUNNY SKIES At this time, and for a long while afterward, it seemed to Wint that all was well with the world. He had some reason to think so. He kept his promise to Hetty; and that matter, which had threatened to cause a difference between him and his father and mother, had resulted in the end in a closer understanding between them. They had let him see their dependence on him; they had let him see something of the depths of affection in their hearts for him. The Chases were not a demonstrative family; not given to much talk of these matters, and Wint found their attitude in some sort a happy revelation. His father began, in an uncertain way, to defer to Wint; the elder Chase began to ask his son’s advice, now and then; he seemed to have recognized the fact of Wint’s manhood; he seemed to have discovered that Wint was no longer a boy. There was a new respect in his bearing toward his son. Wint’s mother had changed, too; she was, perhaps, a little less loquacious. She and the elder Chase were beginning to be proud of Wint; and this pride forced them to see him in a new light. Not as their boy, their son, their child; but as a man whom other men respected.