At the present moment, Mr. Tenney was publicly known as one of the smartest and most “go-ahead” young business men of Thessaly. Dim rumors were upon the air that he was really something more than this; but as the commercial agencies had long ago given him their feeble “A 1” of superlative rating, and nothing definite was known about his outside investments, these reports only added vaguely to his respectability. He was the visible and actual head of the large wholesale hardware house of “S. Tenney & Co.” This establishment had before the war borne another name on the big sign over its portals, that of “Sylvanus Boyce.” A year or two after the war closed a new legend--“Boyce & Co.”--was painted in. Thus it remained until the panic of 1873, when it underwent a transformation into “Boyce & Tenney.” And now for some years the name of Boyce had disappeared altogether, and the portly, redfaced, dignified General had dwindled more and more into a position somewhere between the head book-keeper and the shipping-clerks. He was still a member of the firm, however, and it was apparently about this fact that Mr. Tenney had come to talk. He took a seat beside Horace’s desk, after shaking hands coldly with the young man, and said without ceremony: “I haven’t had a chance before to see you alone. It wouldn’t do to talk over at the store--your father’s in and out all the while, more out than in, by the way--and Tracy’s been here every day since you joined him.” “He’s out of town to-day,” remarked Horace. “So I heard. That’s why I came over. Do you know that your father has overdrawn his income account by nearly eleven thousand dollars, and that the wrong side of his book hasn’t got room for more than another year or so of that sort of thing? In fact, it wouldn’t last that long if I wanted to be sharp with him.” The words were spoken very calmly, but they took the color as by a flash from Horace’s face. He swung his chair round, and, looking Tenney in the eyes, seemed spell-bound by what he saw there. The gaze was sustained between the two men until it grew to be like the experiment of two school-children who try to stare each other down, and under its strain the young lawyer felt himself putting forth more and more exertion to hold his own. “I thought I would tell you,” added the hardware merchant, settling himself back in the chair and crossing his thin legs, and seemingly finding it no effort to continue looking his companion out of countenance. “Yes, I thought you ought to know. I suppose he hasn’t said anything to you about it.” “Not a word,” answered Horace, shifting his glance to the desk before him, and striving with all his might to get his wits under control. “That’s like him. The last thing he ever wants to talk about is business, least of all his own. They tell a story about a man who used to say, ‘Thank God, that’s settled!’ whenever he got a note renewed. He must have been a relation of the General’s.”