By dint of long-continued reasonings like this, William Barrett worked himself up by the time he left the office to seek another interview with John. He said to himself that he would put his pride in his pocket, and go after the young fellow, who no doubt was miserable, though he had so much pluck he would not show it. His heart smote him that he had not taken all these things into consideration before, and he had visions of young Sandford’s misery and despair, which affected even the middle-aged imagination of a man quite unused to anything heroical. He felt that his father had been unkind to John, which gave him at once an impulse and a motive for seeking the young man out--for, though he respected his father, the junior partner was generally more or less in opposition to him. All these things together made him determine to go after John, and have it out with him. He got his address almost stealthily, as not wishing anyone in the office to know until he saw what would come of it, and set out from the office a little earlier than usual that no time might be lost. He found the door open when he came to the house, and being himself somewhat excited, and beyond the rule of common laws, went in without ringing the bell; and, hearing voices in the first sitting-room he came to, knocked at the door. He was thus brought into the very midst of the agitated group which we have attempted to set before the reader at the climax of their excitement. The voices ceased, after a moment, but no attention was paid to Mr. Barrett’s knock. Something of the excitement that was in the air communicated itself to him. ‘Sandford,’ said William Barrett, putting his head in at the door. They were all silent, staring at each other full of confused trouble, suspicion, and uncertainty. Even John felt vaguely, when the original question rose up before him in the sudden apparition of Mr. William Barrett’s grave face, that another matter had since arisen which swallowed up the first. The intruder who came in without invitation, feeling somehow that here was a crisis above conventional rules found that the interest centred like the high light in a picture in the countenance of the man who sat at the table, leaning on it, his whole person quivering with a tremulous movement like palsy, his face turned, pale, with a half-anxious, half-fatuous beseeching smile upon it to the other man standing opposite to him, who on his side looked from John to the new-comer and back again with a look of amazement and confusion. John himself stood half-stupefied between them, giving no more than a glance of recognition to his employer, occupied with more urgent affairs; and yet Mr. Barrett had good reason to know that his own mission to this youth who was so strangely daring his fate, was in one sense life and death.