“Yes, we passed through here one night, and, as our train was delayed below town by a wreck ahead of us, Fred got out and walked around. He was gone till after midnight, and when he came back to the Pullman where I was I noticed that he was powerfully upset, and begun to suspect that maybe this was his old home. He started to tell me about it then, but I stopped him, and it was not till we had been to New York and got back home that he finally told me your name and where you lived. As I said, he has not been the same since then, and, to be honest with you, Mr. Walton, I don't know of anything in the world that will restore his peace of mind, except--” “Except having me send for him,” Simon suddenly let himself go, “and kill the fatted bull-yearling, and put a dinky-dinky cap on his brow, and give him a key to the vault, and start in, hit or miss, exactly where me and him left off!” “You are hard on him, Mr. Walton,” Whipple gasped, fairly staggered by the unexpected retort--“much harder, I must say, than I had hoped to find you. He declared that you wasn't the sort that would forgive easily, but, having been a father once myself, I didn't believe you would, after hearing about your boy's life since he left you, refuse to--” “See here!” Walton interrupted, laying down his pencil and staring at the visitor from eyes which fairly snapped with blended triumph and rage, “you've held the floor long enough; now step aside and let me take it. I don't know as I ever had the luck to run across just such a specimen as you are. You've evidently had very little to do with _business_ men. You seem to have as little common sense as a mountain school-teacher or a young preacher on his first circuit. Here you come with a long, roundabout, hatched-up tale that is so thin and full of holes that a body could throw a straw hat through it. I'd have you understand that this here house is a _bank_. My own granddaddy would have to be identified, if he was alive, before he could cash a check at that front window, and yet here you come--pitapat, pitapat, as unconcerned as a house-cat looking for a place to lie down--back into my private quarters, and propose something that may, or may not, involve every dollar I own on the top-side of the earth. You do all that without even taking the trouble to hint at who you are or where you hail from, and--” “I'm not afraid to give you my name!” the merchant gasped, taken wholly off his guard by the withering attack. “It is Stephen Whipple, sir--W-h-i-double p-l-e, Whipple!” he spelled, and he leaned forward and pointed a stiff finger at Walton's pad. “Write it down. It might get away from you.” “Are you plumb sure it ain't _Jenkins?_” the banker grinned, significantly. “No; nor Jones, nor Smith, nor Brown. It's Whipple--Stephen Whipple. Put it down on your paper. Huh, I'm not ashamed of it!”