“Yes,” said Stacy dryly, “I think you didn't like his marriage. But I'm glad your disinclination to see him isn't on account of that deal in stocks.” “Oh no,” said Van Loo. “Good-by.” But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing could exceed Van Loo's protest of delight at the meeting; nothing his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another engagement. “But your old partner,” he added, with a smile, “is waiting for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping you from him. So glad to see you; you're looking so well. Good-by! Good-by!” Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old impetuousness into his former partner's room. Stacy, already deeply absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and Barker's arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still more rigorous sombreness of color. “Barker boy,” he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which the younger partner remembered, “I don't encourage stag dancing among my young men during bank hours, and you'll please to remember that we are not on Heavy Tree Hill”-- “Where,” broke in Barker enthusiastically, “we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly a mile by the trail.” “And was generally an oath!” said Stacy. “But you're in San Francisco NOW. Where are you stopping?” He took up a pencil and held it over a memorandum pad awaitingly. “At the Brook House. It's”-- “Hold on! 'Brook House,'” Stacy repeated as he jotted it down. “And for how long?” “Oh, a day or two. You see, Kitty”-- Stacy checked him with a movement of his pencil in the air, and then wrote down, “'Day or two.' Wife with you?” “Yes; and oh, Stacy, our boy! Ah!” he went on, with a laugh, knocking aside the remonstrating pencil, “you must listen! He's just the sweetest, knowingest little chap living. Do you know what we're going to christen him? Well, he'll be Stacy Demorest Barker. Good names, aren't they? And then it perpetuates the dear old friendship.”