Twenty minutes later Toby came back and found Walton still at his desk, the money before him; his face had taken on an ashen tinge, the eye he raised had a lacklustre expression. “Well?” he said, eagerly. “I missed him for the first few minutes,” the clerk said. “He was on the way to the train. I took the belt-line down. He was on the car ahead. I was just in time to see him board the Atlanta special.” “So he's gone?” “Yes, he's gone, Mr. Walton.” The old man stared helplessly for a minute into the puzzled face of his clerk, and then he drew the pad to him on which he had written the name of his caller. “Me 'n' him had a tiff,” he said. “We had a sort o' tiff--I reckon you might call it that--after he had told me a long cock-and-bull tale about Fred reforming, and I laughed at him. I reckon I was rough. Then he threw this money at me all in a chunk to settle off the boy's account, and said it might talk plainer than _he_ had. Toby, it don't look _exactly_ like a fake. Fakes ain't worked that way. You see, it was all up between me and him, and there wasn't a thing he could gain by it, and yet he yanked out this wad and threw it at me like so much waste paper. He refused to say where he lives, but here's his name. Fred wrote that the fellow he was with was a merchant, and a big one at that. I wonder if there is any way of finding out just who and what the dang fool is?” “You say you didn't get his address?” Toby inquired, as he helplessly stroked his colorless face and sparse mustache. “No.” The banker uttered something like a moan of self-disgust. “He intimated that he kept it back to keep me from running the boy down. I reckon I made a big fool of myself in the presence of a man that may have unlimited capital for all I know. That's where my judgment slipped a cog for once, I reckon. I set in to believe he was out after my money, and went a little mite over the limit. He didn't _look_ rich, covered with dust like he was, but he _may_ be--he may be all Fred has claimed. Can you think of any way, Toby, to get a report on him?” “I might take Bradstreet's by States,” the clerk suggested, “and run through all the towns and cities far and near.” “It would take a month to go through that big book,” Walton said, dejectedly, “and I want to know to-day, right off. If--if I've made a break as big as that, and--and gone and insulted a man who has befriended my boy, and one who, in fact, says he intends to provide for him liberally, why, it would be nothing but good business to make what amend lies in my power. If the boy really _has_ built himself up, and made good connections, and the like, why, you see, Toby, I ought not to be the _first_--the very _first_--to--to damage his interests. What I said, in my rough way, you see, might have a tendency to sort o' make this Whipple--if he is all right--think twice before helping out the son of a man who rode as high a horse as I was astride of just now. I must have a report on him, I tell you.”