"I've read them," resumed Norcross. "Got the full set. We ought to inform ourselves on such things, Bulger. Especially when we get older. That gravestone now. There's one like it--that I know about." Norcross, with another jerky motion, which seemed to propel him against his will, crossed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretary instantly. "Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then he resumed: "If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those we loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it is all right--that we'll live again. That's what I want--proof--I can't take it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered. "What's thirty years?" The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys, opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers. Norcross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent into memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and then extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature--a young woman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless, too--a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the great painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it only with technical skill. "Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I prefer to keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. She taught school up there. We were--well, the ring's in the box, too. They took it off her finger when they buried her. That's why--" to put the brake on his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rare pleasantries at this point--"that's why I'm still a stock newspaper feature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls." Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the case were two sets of initials in old English letters--"R.H.N." and "H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields, tried idly to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the necessity of expressing sympathy. "Poor--" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of the hand, stopped and saved him. [Illustration: "IT WASN'T THE MONEY; IT WAS THE GAME--"] "Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! It wasn't the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending of _that_. And it isn't just to see her--it's to know if she is still waiting--and if we'll make up for thirty years--out there." As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again. Norcross started; something seemed to snap into place; he was again the silent, guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into the box, closed it. "The automobile," said his secretary. Norcross nodded, and indicated the box. The secretary bore it away.