n a big leather chair. Dick had no brothers and sisters, and his mother
had died long before. He had not lived much at home, and had been on
good, more than affectionate, terms with his father. Indeed, their
relations were marked by mutual indulgence, for Dick had no interest
outside his profession, while Mr. Brandon occupied himself with politics
and enjoyed his prominent place in local society. He was conventional and
his manners were formal and dignified, but Dick thought him very much
like Lance, although he had not Lance's genial humor.

"Well," he said when Dick had finished, "you have made a very bad mess of
things and it is, of course, impossible that you should remain here. In
fact, you have rendered it difficult for me to meet my neighbors and take
my usual part in public affairs."

This was the line Dick had expected him to take. It was his father's
pride he had wounded and not his heart. He did not know what to say and,
turning his head, he looked moodily out of the open window. The lawn
outside was beautifully kept and the flower-borders were a blaze of
tastefully assorted colors, but there was something artificial and
conventional about the garden that was as marked in the house. Somehow
Dick had never really thought of the place as home.

"I mean to go away," he said awkwardly.

"The puzzling thing is that you should deny having drunk too much,"
Brandon resumed.

"But I hadn't done so! You look at it as the others did. Why should it
make matters better if I'd owned to being drunk?"

"Drunkenness," his father answered, "is now an offense against good
taste, but not long ago it was thought a rather gentlemanly vice, and a
certain toleration is still extended to the man who does wrong in liquor.
Perhaps this isn't logical, but you must take the world as you find it. I
had expected you to learn more in the army than you seem to have picked
up. Did you imagine that your promotion depended altogether upon your
planning trenches and gun-pits well?"

"That kind of thing is going to count in the new armies," Dick replied.
"Being popular on guest-night at the mess won't help a man to hold his
trench or work his gun under heavy fire."

Brandon frowned.

"You won't have an opportunity for showing what you can do. I don't know
where you got your utilitarian, radical views; but we'll keep to the
point. Where do you think of going?"

"To New York, to begin with."

"Why not Montreal or Cape Town?"

"Well,"