ay, shook the young man to the depths of his being. Was not
this compensation for everything? Never had he imagined that people
could be so kind; never had he dreamed that people's kindness could mean
so much to him. In the light of this new knowledge, it seemed to him
that the last scales fell from his eyes ... Were not these friendships,
after all, the best work of a man's life? Did he place a higher value
even on his book itself, which, it seemed, he might never finish now?

And now there returned to him something that the dead old Colonel had
told him long ago, and to-day he saw it for truth. However his father
had wronged him, he would always have this, at least, to bless his
memory for. For it was his father who had called him to live in this
city where dwelt, as the strong voice that was now still had said, the
kindest and sweetest people in the world.

* * * * *

Henry G. Surface died at half-past two o'clock on the afternoon of March
24. At one o'clock that night, while the _Post's_ startling story was
yet in process of the making, his son stood at the mantel in Surface's
sitting-room, and looked over the wreck that his hands had made. That
his father's treasures were hidden somewhere here he had hardly
entertained a doubt. Yet he had pulled the place all to pieces without
finding a trace of them.

The once pretty sitting-room looked, indeed, as if a tornado had struck
it. The fireplace was a litter of broken brick and mortar; half the
floor was ripped up and the boards flung back anyhow; table drawers and
bookcases had been ransacked, and looked it; books rifled in vain were
heaped in disorderly hummocks wherever there was room for them;
everywhere a vandal hand had been, leaving behind a train of devastation
and ruin.

And it had all been fruitless. He had been working without pause since
half-past six o'clock, and not the smallest clue had rewarded him.

It was one of those interludes when early spring demonstrates that she
could play August convincingly had she a mind to. The night was
stifling. That the windows had to be shut tight, to deaden the noise of
loosening brick and ripping board, made matters so much the worse.
Surface was stripped to the waist, and it needed no second glance at
him, as he stood now, to see that he was physically competent. There was
no one-sided over-development here; Klinker's exercises, it will be
remembered, were for all parts of the body.