“So you’ve lost your place,” said his mother.

She looked with tender thoughtful eyes at the lad before her, and smoothed his fair hair with a hand that had to reach up to touch it, for she was a little woman.

“Yes,” said the boy, with a lip that he could not keep from quivering a little. “Somehow I didn’t expect it. Of course, I know lots of the fellows have been turned off lately; times are dull just now, and the firm always cut down the force when they can. It’s easy enough to take on new men when they want them, and those who have been there longest have first right to stay. I know that. But somehow I had thought that father’s work with them——”

“Yes,” said his mother. She sat down in a low chair, and with a gesture drew the boy to her side. “You say you had not expected to be turned away, Francis. Neither had I thought of it! There were reasons—— Your father thought that your future was assured, at least, if only—only as an atonement to him. The firm did not promise me to take care of you, to be sure, but it was[246] understood. They sent at once, you know, and offered you the position. It was only right that you should begin at the bottom of the ladder.”

“The bottom of the ladder is about under ground there,” said the boy with a whimsical shake of his head. “It’s pretty low down, I can tell you! Why there are firms not a quarter so rich as they who pay their boys more—enough for car-fare and shoes and lunch, anyway—of course, though that’s one of the ways they get rich. I’m not complaining. But I thought to-day if father were the head of the business, and I had been one of Mr. Nelson’s boys——”

“Your father loved Mr. Nelson,” said the mother, after a silence during which the two had sat with clasped hands. “And Mr. White too,” she added.

“And didn’t they love him?”

“Yes, once—before they began to make so much money, and after it,—perhaps—sometimes! I don’t know. Mr. Nelson was moved when he came to see me that first time; he meant to be kind about you. To your father he was always the friend he had loved even when he was cut to the heart with John Nelson’s altered ways. There are some people who are born constant.”

“But don’t you mind,” said the boy, a little[247] wistfully, “that I am thrown out of the place? I walked around the town two hours this morning before I could make up my mind to come and tell you, though I knew it Friday. I was afraid it would be too great a shock to you; and yet you don’t seem to think anything of it at all.”

“You will be taken back with a larger salary,” said his mother quietly. “You need not look so startled, Francis. I know Nelson and White—what they used to be, and what they are now; I know them thoroughly. If there were any other way—— Dear, there are some things that I cannot tell you, but your father’s son shall not be turned from his old firm while I live. They must respect the honour of their name. No, don’t tell me not to go to them! I’ll not shame you. I am not going to beg them to take you back again, I have the right to demand it. Trust me, Francis!”

“I do, mother,” said the boy, but half doubtfully, as he stooped and kissed the face raised to his.

It was a pretty face, with a broad low forehead and clear grey eyes, dark now with a purpose that he could not understand. He felt uncomfortable without knowing why, as he met their gaze. There was something in them that was not like mother.

[248]

She looked a small enough figure going down the street in her plain black garments and little black bonnet—a small figure to hold the fate of a big business house in that white envelope in her hands. For two years past she had felt that it would come to this some day. The thrill of definite fulfilment tingled now in every tense nerve. The father’s fate should not be his son’s too.

She remembered her husband’s bright faith in the friends of his youth, when they were first married; how he had worked for them with all the powers of body and mind, the manager who ran the business machinery of the house and whose honesty was like the sun, radiating his every act, and whose justice was tempered with mercy. Heaven only knew—and heaven did know—how many boys he had saved from temptation by the kind word in season, how many men he had heartened by his prompt recognition of work well done. He was a man who gave of himself, unvaryingly, to those with whom he came in daily contact, and was a greater factor in the prosperity of the great house than the members of the firm. She remembered how proud he had been of their commercial honesty, and how he had kept his faith in their own personal friendship for him even after the benumbing influences of trade[249] and the exigencies of prosperity had kept them really aloof from each other for months and years. When there was a child born, or a death in the family, the business mask dropped for a few minutes perhaps, to show the old time faces underneath, and the manager loved them, and talked about them long afterwards to his wife. Some day, when John Nelson and Harry White had time——

Then the policy of the house changed. The manager’s salary was cut down; he was no longer called into the confidences of the firm. His wife remembered with hot cheeks and clenched hands how that had hurt him. It was the thought that they could have done it; he would have lived on a pittance willingly if they had needed money. But he defended them, of course; it was his way. He was a very proud man, so proud that his friends’ honour was as his very own; who doubted it, insulted him.

And then—ah, that was hardest! to know that what you love is rotten at the core. That man had no business to tell her husband, but every one in the house told George more even of their own private affairs than he cared to hear. Nothing that went on, for or against their prospects, for or against the good of the business, nay, for or against himself, but was brought to his knowledge for[250] comfort, advice, or denial. He had always borne his full freight of other people’s troubles.

But this thing—— His wife knew how the burden of it had brought the beginning of his illness. It struck at the life of the firm; they had survived, but the blow had killed him. They had used his honesty to cheat with, and had offered him as the sacrifice when they were on the point of detection. Johnson, who partly in horror, partly in protesting doubt, had shown him, with trembling adjurations to utter secrecy, the incriminating paper, did not know that George held the other half of the clue. To have used it in his own defense was to betray one who trusted him, and defile the fair name of the firm.

His widow clasped the envelope tighter in her hands. She had been to her husband the priestess of his heart’s inmost confessional; he had given her a sacred confidence.

But her whole soul rose in rebellion to the thought that her boy was to be sacrificed as her husband had been, with no hand upraised to help him. Her hand was small, but it held a mighty truth in it! All the sense of wrong, and yearning heart-break of years, surged within, to bring with them a fierce avenging joy. Her promise to her husband? He had not known to what it would bind her; she[251] felt herself fully absolved. Nelson and White, Nelson and White, their day of reprisal had come at last. The powerful fetich of their name would crumble into dust, when she struck it!

The dingy brick building with its gaping doorway gave her a shock as she came suddenly upon it. She had not seen it for over two years. That was the doorway under which George used to pass, the steep, worn, wooden staircase, that up which he was wont to climb daily. She had sometimes stopped here for him on her way home. She held her breath with a sickness of heart as she traversed the familiar ways again, looking perforce in at the windowed door behind which his desk used to stand. She was to climb higher to-day, to the sacred rooms of the Firm, the mighty power that had brought into being those rows and rows of clerks at the desks below.

She took her seat on a wooden settle outside the door of the office, which, open at the top, was screened off with ground glass in one corner of the long room, and waited her turn for an audience. She hardly saw the inquiring glances given her from time to time by the clerks; she was full of an intensity of purpose that cut through conventions like a knife. But presently the conversation carried[252] on by the rising voices of men within the office forced itself upon her consciousness unpleasantly.

“Mein Gott! then I lose twenty t’ousand dollar! Consider what that means to me, shentlemen. At this time, at this time, it is ruin!”

“You should have looked out for that before, Hartmann,” answered a cold voice, that the listener recognized as Nelson’s. “We gave you opportunity to examine the goods—you cannot say we did not. If your man was a fool it’s not our fault. We gave you opportunity.”

“Oh, oppo-chunity,” moaned Hartmann. “Mein Gott, what oppo-chu-nity! And the whole cargo rotten! Consider, shentlemen, that it is ruin.”

White’s high shrill tones broke in with an imprecation, “Consider—as you’re so fond of the word—that you tried to cheat us, and got caught; consider that you tried to cut our throat, and we’ve cut yours. You might have known you hadn’t a ghost of a chance with us. We know you’re ruined, and we don’t care. Understand that. We don’t care. Any one who thinks he can work that game on us gets left. You’ve got the rotten cargo, ............