Shepherd entered his father’s office as he always did, nervous and apprehensive. “Well, Father, how’s everything with you today?” he asked with feigned ease. “All right, Shep,” Mills replied pleasantly as he continued signing letters. “Everything all right at the plant?” “Everything running smoothly, Father.” “That’s good.” Mills applied the blotter to the last signature and rang for the stenographer. When the young woman had taken the letters away Mills filled in the assignment on the back of the certificate of stock in the Rogers Company which Carroll had brought him that morning and pushed it across the desk. “You seem to have sold your two hundred shares in the Rogers Trust, Shep--the two hundred you got from your mother’s estate.” “Why, yes, Father,” Shepherd stammered, staring at the certificate. There was no evidence of irritation in his father’s face; one might have thought that Mills was mildly amused by something. “You had a perfect right to dispose of it, of course. I’m just a trifle curious to know why you didn’t mention it to me. It seemed just a little--a little--unfriendly, that’s all.” “No, Father; it wasn’t that!” Shepherd replied hastily. It had not occurred to him that his father would discover the sale so soon. While he hadn’t in so many words asked Gurley to consider the transaction a confidential matter, he thought he had conveyed that idea to the broker. He felt the perspiration creeping out on his face; his hands trembled so that he hid them in his pockets. Mills, his arms on the desk, was playing with a glass paper weight. “How much did Gurley give you for it?” he asked. “I sold it at two seventy-five,” Shepherd answered. The air of the room seemed weighted with impending disaster. An inexorable fate had set a problem for him to solve, and his answers, he knew, exposed his stupidity. It was like a nightmare in which he saw himself caught in a trap without hope of escape. “It’s worth five hundred,” said Mills with gentle indulgence. “But Gurley, in taking advantage of you, blundered badly. I bought it from him at three eighteen. And just to show you that I’m a good sport”--Mills smiled as he reflected that he had never before applied the phrase to himself--“I’m going to sell it back to you at the price Gurley paid you. And here’s a blank check,--we can close the matter right now.”