Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a kind of hoarse shout. "I'm discharged! I'm discharged," he said, "from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my place--a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him damning me, and I saw Lloyd." "Was young Mr. Lloyd there?" asked Ellen, with white lips. "No; I guess he had gone to dinner. And Lloyd looked at me, and I believe he counted every gray hair in my head, and he saw my back, and he saw my hands, and he said--he said I was too old." Andrew snatched his hands from Ellen's grasp, pressed them to his face, and broke into weeping. "Oh, my God, I'm too old, I'm too old!" he sobbed; "I'm out of it! I'm too old!" Ellen regarded him, and her face had developed lines of strength hitherto unrevealed. There was no pity in it, hardly love; she looked angry and powerful. "Father, stop doing so, and look at me," she said. She dragged her father's hands from his face, and he stared at her with his inflamed eyes, half terrified, half sustained. At that moment he realized a strength of support as from his own lost youth, a strength as of eternal progress which was more to be relied upon than other human strength. For the first time he leaned on his child, and realized with wonder the surety of the stay. "Now, father, you stop doing so," said Ellen. "You can get work somewhere; you are not old. Call yourself old! It is nonsense. Are you going to give in and be old because two men tell you that you are? What if your hair is gray! Ever so many young men have gray hair. You are not old, and you can get work somewhere. McGuire's and Lloyd's are not the only factories in the country." "That ain't all," said Andrew, with eyes like a beseeching dog's on her face. "I know that isn't all," said Ellen. "You needn't be afraid to tell me, father. You have taken the money out of the savings-bank for something." Again Andrew would have snatched his hands from the girl's and hidden his face, but she held them fast. "Yes, I have," he admitted, in a croaking voice. "Well, what if you have?" asked Ellen. "You had a right to take it out, didn't you? You put it in. I don't know of anybody who had a better right to take it out than you, if you wanted to." Andrew stared at her, as if he did not hear rightly. "You don't know what I did with it, Ellen," he stammered. "It is nobody's business," replied Ellen. She had an unexplained sensation as if she were holding fast to her father's slipping self-respect which was dragging hard at her restraining love. "I put it in a worthless gold-mine out in Colorado--the same one your uncle Jim lost his money in," groaned Andrew.