Fate was kind to him thus far. After a little further talk, in which the accepted point of view of the on looker at the great game was made still more painfully evident for the unwilling listener, the men went away. For a long time after they had gone, Blount sat crumpled in the depths of the big chair, chewing his extinct cigar and staring absently at the row of books on a level with his eyes in the opposite case. One clear thought, and one only, came out of the sorrowful confusion: not for any inducement that could now be offered would he lend himself to the furtherance of his father's plans. Beyond this he did not reason in the miserable hour wrought out in the quiet of the club smoking-room. But when he got up to go, another prompting was forcing its way to the surface--a prompting to throw himself boldly into the scale against graft and chicanery; to redeem at any cost, and by whatsoever means might offer, the good old name which had been so shamefully dragged in the mire. He did not know just how it was to be done, but he told himself that he would find a way. That the path would be full of thorns he could not doubt, since every step in it would widen the breach which must be opened between his father and himself. Possibly it might lead him to the bar of justice as that father's accuser, but even in that hard case he must not falter. He said to himself, in a fresh access of passionate determination, that though he might have to blush for his father, Patricia should not be made ashamed for her lover. Upon leaving the club, he paused long enough to remember that he was in no fit frame of mind to risk an immediate meeting with his father. To make even a chance meeting impossible, he crossed the street, and, passing through the Capitol grounds, strolled aimlessly out one of the residence avenues until he came to the open country beyond the suburbs. It was quite late in the afternoon when he re-entered the city by another street and boarded a trolley car for the down-town centre. The long afternoon tramp, and the conclusions it had bred, made it imperative for him to see Gantry before the traffic manager should leave his office for the day. His business with the railroad man was purely personal. He meant to ask Gantry a few pointed questions requiring such answers as friendship may demand. If Gantry's replies were such as he feared they would be, he would seek his father and come at once to a plain understanding with him.