and account-closings. It’s telling on us fast now, and the end is practically in sight. This is no world for the idealist in business, David.”

[12]

David Vallory was silent for a time, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped in his palms. His pipe had gone out, but he still held it clamped between his teeth. In Middleboro tradition it was said that he favored his mother’s people, and the square-set, firm-lipped mouth bore out the assertion. But the good gray eyes were, not the eyes of a dreamer, perhaps, but the eyes of the son of a dreamer; more—they were the eyes of a man who had not yet outgrown the illusions. Adam Vallory had matured slowly; he was in his thirties when he married. And the slow maturing process seemed to have been handed on to the son. A stronger man than his father, this David, one would have said; though perhaps only as athletic youth is stronger than age. And a close observer, like the crop-bearded[13] stranger of the Pullman car, might have added that the strength was idealistic rather than practical; a certain potency of endurance rather than of militancy.

[13]

“Just how bad is it—in actual figures?” the son asked, at the end of the chin-nursing pause.

Adam Vallory closed his eyes as one wearied and stunned in the clash and clamor of a battle too great for him.

“We can go on paying out to-day, and perhaps to-morrow. Beyond that, there is failure for the bank; and—and beyond the failure, David, there is a prison for me!”

The younger man straightened up quickly and there was unfeigned horror in the good gray eyes.

“Good heavens, Dad!—you don’t mean anything like that!” he exclaimed in a shocked voice.

“I wish I didn’t, son, but it is true. I have been weak; criminally weak, some will say. All along I have been clinging desperately to the hope that I could pull through; that the bad paper the bank is holding would somehow miraculously turn into good paper. A better business man would have faced the worst weeks ago. I didn’t. We have gone on receiving deposits when I knew that we were, to all intents and purposes, insolvent. That, as you know, is a penitentiary offense.”

[14]David Vallory got upon his feet and began to pace up and down the length of the small room, three strides and a turn. It was his maiden projection into the jostling arena 

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