_Rutherford._ Your price--your price? Damn your impudence, sir.... So that's your line, is it?... This is what I get for all I've done for you.... This is the result of the schooling I gave you. I've toiled and sweated to give you a name you'd be proud to own--worked early and late, toiled like a dog when other men were taking their ease--plotted and planned to get my chance, taken it and held it when it come till I could ha' burst with the struggle. Sell! You talk o' selling to me, when everything you'll ever make couldn't pay back the life I've given to you! _John._ Oh, I know, I know. I've been both for five years. Only I've had no salary. _Rutherford._ You've been put to learn your business like any other young fellow. I began at the bottom--you've got to do the same.... Your father has lived here, and your grandfather before you. It's your inheritance--can't you realize that?--what you've got to come to when I'm under ground. We've made it for you, stone by stone, penny by penny, fighting through thick and thin for close on a hundred years.... It's what you've got to do--or starve. You're my son--you've got to come after me. _Janet_ knows her father better than _John_; she knows that "no one ever stands out against father for long--or else they get so knocked about, they don't matter any more." _Janet_ knows, and when the moment arrives that brings her father's blow upon her head, it does not come as a surprise to her. When old _Rutherford_ discovers her relation with _Martin_, his indignation is as characteristic of the man as everything else in his life. It is not outraged morality or a father's love. It is always and forever the House of Rutherford. Moreover, the discovery of the affair between his daughter and his workman comes at a psychologic moment: _Rutherford_ is determined to get hold of _John's_ invention--for the Rutherfords, of course--and now that _Martin_ has broken faith with his master, his offense serves an easy pretext for _Rutherford_ to break faith with _Martin_. He calls the old servant to his office and demands the receipt of _John's_ invention, entrusted to _Martin_. On the latter's refusal to betray _John_, the master plays on the man's loyalty to the Rutherfords.