ew you'd see so plainly wherever we
were lacking; but you were so splendidly kind about it--"

"And why shouldn't I be kind, Dick?" spoke his grandfather eagerly.
"What have I in the world to interest me as you and your affairs
interest me? Can any possible stroke of fortune seem so great to me as
your development into a manhood of accomplishment? And when it is in the
very world I know so well and have so near my heart--"

Richard interrupted him, not realizing that he was doing so, but full of
longing to make all still further clear between them. "Grandfather, I
want to make a confession. This world of yours--I didn't want to enter
it."

"I know you didn't, Dick. And I know why. But you are getting over that,
aren't you? You are beginning to realize that it isn't what a man does,
but the way he does it, that matters."

"Yes," said Richard slowly. "Yes, I'm beginning to realize that. And do
you want to know what made me realize it to-day, as never before?"

The old man waited.

"It was the sight of you, sir--and--the recognition of the power you
have been all your life;--and the--sudden appreciation of the"--he
stumbled a little, but he brought the words out forcefully at the
end--"of the very great gentleman you are!"

He could not see the hot tears spring into the old eyes which had not
known such a sign of emotion for many years. But he could feel the throb
in the low voice which answered him after a moment.

"I may not deserve that, Dick, but--it touches me, coming from you."

When Richard had gone back to his own room, Matthew Kendrick lay for a
long time, wide awake, too happy to sleep. In the next room his
grandson, before he slept, had formulated one more new idea:

"There's something in the association with people like these that makes
a fellow feel like being absolutely honest with them, with
everybody--most of all with himself. What is it?"

And pondering this, he was lost in the world of dreams.

CHAPTER XVI

ENCOUNTERS

"By the way, Rob, I saw Rich Kendrick to-day." Louis Gray detained his
sister Roberta on the stairs as they stopped to exchange greetings on a
certain evening in March. "It struck me suddenly that I hadn't seen him
for a blue moon, and I asked him why he didn't come round when he was in
town. He said he was sticking tight to that new business of his up in
Eastman, but he admitted he was to be here over Sunday. I invited him
round to-night, but to my surprise he woul