“You’ve been doing all the scrapping, thus far, Dad, but now you must let me take my whirl at[42] it. We’ll let the old ship go decently and honorably ashore, and then climb out and save the pieces. We’ll pay Mr. Grillage back all we can rake and scrape out of the wreck; and beyond that——”

[42]

“Well?—beyond that, what, son?”

“It sounds rather stagy, but I’m going to say it. Beyond what money payment we may be able to make, we shall owe Mr. Grillage a debt of gratitude that will be canceled only when we are both under the sod. That is about the way it strikes me. I don’t care what people say about his business methods and the way he rides rough-shod over his competitors; that doesn’t cut any figure in his relations with you. He has done this thing for you, individually, and I don’t come even into the outer edges of it; just the same, he has laid an obligation upon me that I shall never live long enough to forget.”

For a long minute Adam Vallory sat staring into vacancy. When he looked up it was to say: “You are bone of my bone, David, and I thank God for a son who can see eye to eye with me at a time like this. And yet ... you are young, David; in many ways you are younger than your years. You are maturing slowly, just as I did. Sometimes I’ve been afraid—afraid you might[43] throw yourself into something as a boy throws himself, without reserve, you know; blind to everything but the one thing, whatever it might be. If you can only have time to ripen——”

[43]

David’s laugh was entirely care free. “That was the way you talked when I went to college, Dad, and again, when I left for Florida. I haven’t noticed that I’m particularly raw, compared with other men.”

“It isn’t that,” the father hastened to say, “it’s just that, up to to-day, you’ve never had to shoulder a man’s load. Perhaps I am foolishly apprehensive, but the way in which you spoke just now of our obligation—your obligation—to Eben Grillage.... I don’t know how to express it, but it made me feel as I have sometimes felt before; that if anything which you might conceive to be a duty were pushing you, you’d shut your eyes and go to any length.”

David laughed and shook his head. “Some day, Dad, you’ll wake up and find that I’m a man grown; or I hope you will. Just the same, we do owe Mr. Grillage a lot more than we can ever pay, and if it ever comes in my way to chop the debt down a bit, you may be sure I’ll sharpen 

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