The Mayor stepped forward, his face ruddied with a smile. "Friend, put 'er there!" invited his gruff diaphragm, and David put his hand to bed in the big, mattress-soft palm. "Well, sir, I'm certainly happy--that's me! On the level, when I first heard you were tryin' to write a book, said I to myself, private-like, 'he'd better be makin' tidies.' But you're the goods, friend! Every man and woman on the Avenue has got to buy one o' your books, you bet!" "Say, pard, you're certainly it!" cried Tom, who had seized him from the other side. "Dat puts you on top--way up where you belongs. An' no more worryin' about de coin!" "I'm glad too,--you know that, Aldrich!" said Rogers, grasping David's hand. Rogers's face was drawn; David's success had freshened, emphasised, his own failure. "I wish both of us could have pulled out. But if only one of us could, it's best that that one is you. I'm glad, Aldrich!" David felt the pain behind Rogers's words, felt their pathos, and he suddenly was ashamed of his success. "It's because I was doing something where the world did not have to trust me," he said apologetically. "It's because you are the exceptional man, doing the exceptional thing. They have a chance. The others have not." Kate had not moved since David had announced his good fortune. She stood with her hands on the table and leaning slightly against it, her white, strained face fastened on David. "I'm glad, too," she now said, in a voice that had a trace of tremolo; and, turning abruptly, she went into the office. In there, alone, she sat at her desk with her cheeks in her hands. Soon, with a little burst of despair, she cried out: "Why did this have to happen!" And she added, with a moan: "Oh, David, this puts you such a long ways off!" That afternoon and evening David could settle to nothing; and that night he slept not a minute for sweeping joy, for flashing ideas for stories, for swift, vivid visions of the future. The next morning he had a note from Helen asking him to call in the afternoon. "You remember my speaking to you about the check for twenty thousand dollars my father gave me," she said, when he had come. Her face was pale and she spoke with an effort. "I've decided what to do with it. I want you to help me." "If I can," he said. "I've been thinking a great deal about Mr. Rogers." She paused, then went on, her voice more strained. "He should not have lost that money. I have cashed the check. I want to give the money to Mr. Rogers--not as a gift, but as property that belongs to him." He looked wonderingly into her pained eyes. "You're in earnest?" he said slowly. "I am--I must do it. And I want you to take the money to him, from"--she obeyed a sudden instinct of blood-loyalty--"from my father." His anger against her father suddenly flamed up. "From your father? I know how much your father knows of this plan!"