Once when his doctor had prescribed exercise for a slight dyspepsia, he had added a few additional blocks to his morning and evening walk, and it was while he was performing this self-inflicted penance that he came upon Gabriel, who was hastening toward him in behalf of John Henry. For an instant a gleam of light shone on Cyrus's features, and they stood out, palely illuminated, like the features of a bronze statue above which a torch suddenly flares. His shoulders, which stooped until his coat had curved in the back, straightened themselves with a jerk, while he held out his hand, on which an old sabre cut was still visible. This faded scar had always seemed to Gabriel the solitary proof that the great man was created of flesh and blood. "I've come about a little matter of business," began the rector in an apologetic tone, for in Cyrus's presence he was never without an uneasy feeling that the problems of the spirit were secondary to the problems of finance. "Well, I'm just going into the office. Come in and sit down. I'm glad to see you. You bring back the four happiest years of my life, Gabriel." "And of mine, too. It's queer, isn't it, how the savage seems to sleep in the most peaceable of men? We were half starved in those days, half naked, and without the certainty that we'd live until sunset--but, dreadful as it sounds, I was happier then--God help me!--than I've ever been before or since." Passing through an outer office, where a number of young men were bending over ledgers, they entered Cyrus's private room, and sat down in two plain pine chairs under the coloured lithograph of an engine which ornamented the largest space on the wall. The room was bare of the most ordinary comforts, as though its owner begrudged the few dollars he must spend to improve his surroundings. "Well, those days are over, and you say it's business that you've come about?" retorted Cyrus, not rudely, but with the manner of a man who seldom wastes words and whose every expenditure either of time or of money must achieve some definite result. "Yes, it's business." The rector's tone had chilled a little, and he added in spite of his judgment, "I'm afraid it's a favour. Everybody comes begging to you, I suppose?" "Then, it's the Sunday-school picnic, I reckon. I haven't forgotten it. Smithson!" An alert young man appeared at the door. "Make a note that Mr. Pendleton wants coaches for the Saint James' Church picnic on the twenty-ninth. You said twenty-ninth, didn't you, Gabriel?" "If the weather's good," replied Gabriel meekly, and then as Smithson withdrew, he glanced nervously at the lithograph of the engine. "But it wasn't about the picnic that I came," he said. "The fact is, I wanted to ask you to use your influence in the matter of getting John Henry a place in the bank. He has done very well at the night school, and I believe that you would find him entirely satisfactory."