"And a jolly lot that means to me," retorted Masters, with acerbity. "I live here among illiterates, working for a corporation on a salary pared to the bone. At the time of life when one ought to be at the top of one's abilities, I'm the most pathetic human thing under God's arching sky--a man who started out with big promise--and fell by the wayside. Heaven help the man who fires and falls back--and if he can retrieve a bit of temporary solace from that poor substitute"--he jerked a forefinger toward the bottle--"then I say for Heaven's sake let him poison himself comfortably and welcome." Colonel Wallifarro studied the darkened scowl of his companion for a moment before he replied, and when he spoke his own manner retained its imperturbability. "I didn't offer gratuitous criticism, Larry," he suggested. "I merely declined another toddy." "You know my case, Tom"--the younger of the two caught him up quickly; "you know that no younger son ever came out from England with fairer expectations of succeeding on his own. I've been neither the fool nor the shirk--and yet--" A shrug of disgust finished the sentence. Colonel Wallifarro studied his cigar ash without rejoinder, and when Larry Masters failed to draw a return fire of argument, he sat for a minute or two glumly silent. Then, as his thoughts coursed back into other years, a slow light kindled in his eyes, as if for a dead dream. "You were always sceptical about Middlesboro, even when others were full of faith--but why?" he demanded. "To you, with your Bluegrass ideas of fat acres, these hills must always be the ragged fringes of things, a meagre land without a future. It was only that you lacked imagination." The speaker swept torrentially on with as much of argumentative warmth as though he had not just confessed himself ruined by reason of his own former confidence. "Where the Gap came through lay the natural gateway of the hills, hewn out in readiness by the hand of the Almighty. There was water-power--ore. There was coal, for smelter and market, timber awaiting the axe and the saw-mill--the whole tremendous treasure house of a natural Eldorado." "Perhaps," observed the Colonel, "and yet, when all is said and done, it was only a boom--and it collapsed. Whatever the causes, the results are definite." "Yes, it collapsed, and we went with it." Masters paused to take up and empty the glass which had started the discussion, then with a heightened excitement he swept on afresh: "Yet how near we came! Gad, man, your own eyes saw our conception grow! You saw lots along what had been creek-bed trails sell at a footage-price that rivalled New York's best avenues, and you yourself recognized in me, for all your scepticism, a man with a golden future. Then--after all that--you saw me jolly well ruined--and yet you prate of what life may hold for me in the vigour of my middle-age."