They paced back and forth at the roadside, hardly aware of occasional fast-flying cars whose headlights fell upon them for a moment and left them again to the stars. When the first passion of his bitter indignation had spent itself, Shepherd admitted his father’s generosity. There was no question of money; his father wished him to live as became the family dignity. Constance was fine; she was the finest woman alive, he declared with a quaver in his voice. But she too had her grievances; his father was never fair to Constance. Here Shepherd caught himself up sharply. It was the widening breach between himself and his father that tore his heart, and Constance had no part in that. “I’m stupid; I don’t catch things quickly,” he went on wearily. “But I’ve tried to learn; I’ve done my best to please father. But it’s no good! I give it up!” Bruce, astounded and dismayed by this long recital, was debating what counsel he could offer. He could not abandon Shepherd Mills in his dark hour. The boy--he seemed only that tonight, a miserable, tragic boy--had opened his heart with a child’s frankness. Bruce, remembering his own unhappy hours, resolved to help Shepherd Mills if he could. Their stay by the river must not be prolonged; Shepherd was shivering with cold. Bruce had never before been so conscious of his own physical strength. He wished that he might confer it upon Shepherd--add to his stature, broaden the narrow shoulders that were so unequal to heavy burdens! It was, he felt, a critical hour in Shepherd Mills’s life; the wrong word might precipitate a complete break in his relations with his father. Franklin Mills, as Bruce’s imagination quickened under the mystical spell of the night, loomed beside them--a shadowy figure, keeping step with them on the dim bank where the wind mourned like an unhappy spirit through the sycamores. “I had no right to bother you; you must think me a fool,” Shepherd concluded. “But it’s helped me, just to talk. I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t mind----” “Of course I don’t mind!” Bruce replied, and laid his hand lightly on Shepherd’s shoulder. “I’m pleased that you thought of me; I want to help. Now, old man, we’re going to pull you right out of this! It’s disagreeable to fumble the ball as we all do occasionally. But this isn’t so terrible! That was a fine idea of yours to build a clubhouse for the workmen: but on the other hand there’s something to be said for your father’s reasons against it. And frankly, I think you made a mistake in selling your stock without speaking to him first. It wasn’t quite playing the game.” “Yes; I can see that,” Shepherd assented faintly. “But you see I’d got my mind on it; and I wanted to make things happier for those people.”