neatly folded little bundle of documents.
“Stop,” exclaimed the banker. “You need not even undo that piece of tape until you have answered my questions. A speculative deal, you admit.”
“Be it so.”
“A mining deal, may I ask?”
Roderick’s face showed some confusion. But he faced the issue promptly and squarely.
“Yes, sir, a mining deal.”
The banker’s eyes fairly glittered with steely wrathfulness.
“As I expected. By gad, it seems to run in the blood! Did I not warn you, when you insisted on risking your meagre capital of two thousand dollars in New York instead of settling down with what would have been a comfortable nest egg here, that if you ever touched mining it would be your ruin? Did I not tell you your father’s story, how the lure of prospecting possessed him, how he could never throw it off, how it doomed him to a life of hardship and poverty, and how it would have left you, his child, a pauper but for an insurance policy which it was his one redeeming act of prudence in carrying?”
“Please do not speak like that of my father,” protested Roderick, drawing himself up with proud
The banker’s manner softened; a kindlier glow came into his eyes.
“Well, boy, you know I loved your father. If your father had only followed my path he would have shared my prosperity. But it was not to be. He lost all he ever made in mining, and now you are flinging the little provision his death secured for you into the same bottomless pool. And this despite all my warnings, despite my stern injunctions so long as it was my right as your guardian to enjoin. The whole thing disgusts me more than words can tell.”
Into the banker’s voice the old bitterness, if not the anger, had returned. He rose and restlessly paced the room. A silence followed that was oppressive. Roderick Warfield’s mind was in the future; he was wondering what would happen should his uncle remain obdurate. The older man’s mind was in the past; he
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