Philip’s gaze swept the ring of faces until he came to that of the shirt-sleeved dealer, flipping the cards two by two with automatic precision out of the box under his hands. One glance at the clean-cut, deeply lined face with its cold eyes, thin nostrils and lean jaw was all that was needed, and Philip’s heart skipped a beat and stood still. His fruitless search of the past few weeks for his father had ended--_here_! Gropingly, and as if his sight had suddenly failed him, he edged his way around the table and touched the shirt-sleeved man on the shoulder. The cold gray eyes were lifted to his for a flitting instant; then the dealer made a sign to his substitute and got up from his place, saying quietly to Philip: “I’ve been expecting you. We’ll go up-stairs.” Wholly speechless, Philip followed his father into the hall, up a stairway and into a room on the third floor where a gas jet, turned low, was burning. John Trask reached up and turned the gas on full. “Might as well sit down,” he said to his son; and Philip sank into a chair and fought for speech. But the words would not come. The crushing silence was broken at length by the father. “You’ve been looking for me?” Philip nodded and moistened his dry lips to say, “Everywhere.” “I thought most likely you might--after I saw your name in the papers as one of the ‘lucky-strikers.’” Then: “You knew me--without the beard?” “Of course,” said Philip dully. “You look just the same, only older.” “I am older; a good deal older than the six years will account for. Tell me about your mother and sisters: you hear from them, don’t you?” “They are well--and well provided for, now.” “I suppose they have given me up for dead, haven’t they?” “I don’t know; I only know that I hadn’t.” “Maybe it would have been better if you had.” “No!” Philip broke in desperately. “There is something for you to do--a thing I can help you do, now that I have money.” “What is it?” “To go back to New Hampshire with me and fight those liars, who said you stole from the bank, to a finish in the courts; to make the Trask name once more what it has always been--an honest one. I’ll back you, to the last dollar there is in my half of the mine.” The thin lips of the older man parted in the ghost of a smile. “Spoken like a good son--or at least a dutiful one,” he said, in a tone that seemed slightly acid. “But why be so anxious about the name?” “Why?--why?” Philip demanded. “Why shouldn’t I be anxious about it? Isn’t it the name I bear?” “A name is nothing unless you make it something--but we won’t argue about that. You say you want me to go back to New Hampshire and set things right. It hasn’t occurred to you that there might be a certain difficulty in the way?” “You mean the fact that you didn’t stay and fight it out at the time?” The ghost of a smile came again.