“Always--when he buys something of which he is doubtful, to make himself think it will come out all right,” answered Kendrick, unsmilingly, and proceeded to make out a check for the two hundred thousand dollars as though it were for two hundred. A wonderful thing, this game of being rich, thought Tommy, to whom riches suddenly meant the slaying of a secret and the ability to make others happy. Kendrick took the check in to the colonel for his signature, returned with it, sat down at a typewriter, and himself wrote the letter to Tommy, read it carefully, put the carbon copy of it away in a file marked “T,” signed the original with the colonel's name, “per J. B. K.,” and gave Tommy the letter with the check attached to it with a wire clip. “Thank you,” said Tommy, very calmly. Two hundred thousand dollars! “One moment, please. Will you kindly sign this receipt?” Tommy kindly did so. Kendrick took it from him silently. “Er--good afternoon?” said Tommy, who really wished to say a great deal more. “Good afternoon!” said Kendrick, who did not. “No man for the Tecumseh,” thought Tommy, as he walked out of the office--a successful man. The colonel had spoken about getting the check certified. Tommy did not quite know how to go about it, but his father could tell him. From the Willetts Building Tommy walked to his father's bank. At the imposing entrance Tommy halted. He had never been inside. He looked at the huge gray building with an interest that was almost uncomfortable. People were straggling out. Nobody was going in. He saw by the clock on Trinity's steeple that it was after banking hours. He assumed that if he saw his father there would be no trouble in transacting his business, notwithstanding the hour. He started toward the main entrance and suddenly halted in his tracks. He could not go in. Within that building worked his father, an old and trusted employee of the bank, who had educated his son too expensively for an old and trusted bank employee. It was the birthplace of the secret! Suddenly the huge gray building took on an accusing aspect, cold, menacing. The massive granite columns became sentinels on guard. He owed that building seventeen thousand dollars, and the granite columns knew it! “I'll see him at home to-night!” decided Tommy. His heart was beating at such a furious rate that he forgot about his success. The check for two hundred thousand dollars was merely a bit of waste paper. The vision of his work vanished utterly into a future that ceased to exist. The present was before him. What would Colonel Willetts say when he learned what his father had done, year after year! And what would the bank say? And what would everybody say to the beneficiary of that deed, innocent but none the less the sole beneficiary?