“I’ll take you over to papa’s in my car, Dan,” he said. “I been talkin’ some more to the old man durin’ the show. He’ll stick, all right, as a favour to me, because I put it to him pretty stiff that you’re my old friend, and what you’ve done for this town has made money for Kohn & Sons, and’s bound to make more in the future, besides; and I told him anyhow, by golly, he just had to! Well, he says he’ll stick, and he’ll do it, Dan; but he ain’t none too sure he can carry them old shellbacks with him. He ain’t never been any pessimist about anything, Dan, but he thinks they see a chance to clean up if they call you. He’s afraid he can’t stop ’em from doin’ it, Dan.” Dan frowned angrily. “Well—let ’em call! They can’t break me! I’ll _make_ it, all right, Sam—I’ve been through these things before.” Sam’s voice had shown some emotion, but now it became tremulous with sympathy and with anger. “That bunch of old shellbacks, they haven’t got sense enough to see what a man like you means to their own business in the long run. They haven’t got any what you call vision, as it were. They belong to the old generation, the bunch of old back numbers! Honest, they make me sick as a cat, Dan.” He was still thus abusing the shellbacks when he and his friend passed out of the theatre, and were almost swept from their feet by squalls of chilling rain before they could get into his car. He did all the talking, an unusual thing for Dan to allow a companion to do. Always before, when misfortune had threatened, he had been jauntily voluble. He did not come home until one o’clock, but there was a light in the library, and, going in, he found his mother reading “In Memoriam.” She had begun to stoop after her husband’s death, and her hair had lost its last touch of gray; it was all white now, so that even to the glamouring eyes of her son she had come to be a little, fragile old lady; but her good will to all the world still looked forth through the thick glass of her spectacles. “Why, mother! You oughtn’t to be up this late!” “I just got to reading——” she explained. “I like to read on a rainy night. Did you lock the front door?” “Yes. Isn’t Lena in?” “Yes. Mr. McMillan brought her home an hour ago. Yes; _she’s_ in.” Dan laughed, noting her emphasis. “‘_She_ is?’” he repeated. “Well, then we’re _all_ in. Who else is left to come in?” He went to her and patted her shoulder. “I believe you were sitting up for me. Don’t you know better?” “I might be anxious about you, such a bad night, Dan,” she said. “I don’t like to pester you, but you ought to take some regular exercise. You never _have_ taken any; and you eat your meals just anytime you happen to get a minute or two. I do think you’ve been looking pretty run-down lately; but I wasn’t sitting up for you—not exactly, that is. I mean I was really sitting up for somebody else.” “Who?”