“But did you--” began Tommy, tremblingly. “I became a thief,” interrupted Mr. Leigh, sternly, “when I decided to steal, with my eyes wide open to the consequences and my heart full of joy over being able to give you what I wished. Therefore, you are the son of a thief, even though the thief didn't physically steal the money.” “You didn't?” cried Tommy, chokingly. “My son, if my mind was the mind of a thief and my heart was the heart of a thief, am I not guilty of having been a thief?” “No!” shouted Tommy, very loudly. “Oh yes! My pocket did not hold the stolen money. But my heart held the sin--” “Nonsense!” cried Tommy. “Your heart held only love.” “And theft!” And Mr. Leigh nodded to himself, affirmatively. “Very well. If you are a thief I am one, too.” “No, Thomas. Being a boy, with a boy's mind and a boy's fears, you are assuring yourself that technically you are not the son of a thief. You are beyond the reach of the law of the land, but I am none the less a thief. I tell you I took two thousand dollars a year from the bank for ten years, undetected. I stole it and was glad of it to the extent that I had made detection humanly impossible. I never”--and Mr. Leigh smiled, grimly--“went so far as to feel an artist's pride over my exploit. Indeed, at times I rather regretted the necessity of violating the trust reposed in me, for without that trust all my cleverness would have availed nothing. But I tell you that money was in my pocket. I felt it there for many, many years. Your father was a thief as surely as if a jury had found him guilty.” “And if a jury did his son wouldn't,” said Tommy, eagerly. “And if anybody calls me the son of a thief I'll admit it--with pride!” “Boy, boy, you do not understand,” said Mr. Leigh, in a low voice. “You cannot know what it cost me. But I do not begrudge the cost!” “That's what you said, that made me so certain that you had--” Tommy checked himself abruptly. “That I had stolen the money? Well, I did, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, firmly. Tommy smiled forgivingly and said, “Tell me now how you did not steal the money that you spent on me, won't you?” “Well, when I saw how, without being discovered, I could take the money, as soon as I was ready I studied in turn the bank's problem--how to make it impossible for anybody to steal money; and I found a way of preventing not only my theft, but other thefts by other people in other positions. And then, because I wondered why people studied so hard how to make money and so little how to keep it, I began to study how to make it. I analyzed some of the bank's most profitable deals and the operations of our most successful financiers. I saw what capital with brains could do alone; and then what capital without brains, and then what brains without capital could do. I found it was not difficult for brains to make money the moment capital was made aware of the existence of brains.