actually have done it if you hadn't shown me that it would go against my pocket.” “I think you look at it too seriously, Mr. Walton,” Toby ventured to say, as the two leaned on the gate and looked down the gas-lighted street. “You mustn't forget that Fred has been longing for your forgiveness all these years. What he did was wrong, it is true, and at present it may be the chief bar to his content. Besides, me and you are the only persons who know about his shortage. You have never been a man to talk of your private affairs, and, for all _this_ town knows or ever _need_ know, you may have been in touch with Fred all these years. In fact, they may not know but what the--the _other matter_ was the only cause of Fred's leaving.” “Toby, you are a good un! You'll do, you'll do! Of course, the woman business is bad, but the world somehow don't condemn it as heavy as some other things. No, you are right; this blasted town needn't know about the trouble between me and him. He won't want to come back here nohow till the other matter is arranged some way, and, between me and you, we can sort o' spring his big success on the town--kind o' off-hand, you know, as if it ain't nothing to wonder at.” “A good idea, Mr. Walton!” Toby declared, enthusiastically. “It will set 'em wild.” “But we'll leave the adopted-son part out, Toby.” “Of course, sir; oh yes, sir; that needn't go in!” “We might just tell about his being a partner in the business, or something along that line.” “Of course, sir.” “And I'll go out there, Toby. It will be like pulling eye-teeth, but I'll go. I'll knuckle, too, I reckon, to that fat chump. I'll make my will in the boy's favor and show it to Whipple, with an itemized list of my holdings, here and there. He won't sneer then, I reckon. Besides, Fred won't go back on me. Blood's thicker than water, and if I have been harsh--well, even if I _have_, my money will be as acceptable as that old skunk's. Yes, I'll run out in a day or so. And, Toby, I'll not even touch on the woman-and-child affair. He may think it never got out; he may believe she's kept it quiet. In the letters he wrote me, he never once alluded to it, and that shows he is not ready to admit it, anyway. No, we won't push that on him at such a time; he never _would_ want to come home if he knew there had been such an uproar.” CHAPTER XVII |SIMON WALTON had been away a week, and the force at the bank had not heard from him, when one morning Toby received a telegram from him dated that day in Atlanta. The carefully chosen ten words ran as follows: “_Meet me with horse and buggy at afternoon up train_.”