was seated, and stood looking down at
him. But the Honourable Hilary appeared unconscious of what was
impending.

"Your son!" exclaimed Mr. Flint. "So your son, the son of the man who has
been my legal adviser and confidant and friend for thirty years, is going
to join the Crewel and Tootings in their assaults on established decency
and order! He's out for cheap political preferment, too, is he? By
thunder! I thought that he had some such thing in his mind when he came
in here and threw his pass in my face and took that Meader suit. I don't
mind telling you that he's the man I've been afraid of all along. He's
got a head on him--I saw that at the start. I trusted to you to control
him, and this is how you do it."

It was characteristic of the Honourable Hilary, when confronting an angry
man, to grow cooler as the other's temper increased.

"I don't want to control him," he said.

"I guess you couldn't," retorted Mr. Flint.

"That's a better way of putting it," replied the Honourable Hilary, "I
couldn't."

The chief counsel for the Northeastern Railroads got up and went to the
window, where he stood for some time with his back turned to the
president. Then Hilary Vane faced about.

"Mr. Flint," he began, in his peculiar deep and resonant voice, "you've
said some things to-day that I won't forget. I want to tell you, first of
all, that I admire my son."

"I thought so," Mr. Flint interrupted.

"And more than that," the Honourable Hilary continued, "I prophesy that
the time will come when you'll admire him. Austen Vane never did an
underhanded thing in his life--or committed a mean action. He's be'n
wild, but he's always told me the truth. I've done him injustice a good
many times, but I won't stand up and listen to another man do him
injustice." Here he paused, and picked up his bag. "I'm going down to
Ripton to write out my resignation as counsel for your roads, and as soon
as you can find another man to act, I shall consider it accepted."

It is difficult to put down on paper the sensations of the president of
the Northeastern Railroads as he listened to these words from a man with
whom he had been in business relations for over a quarter of a century, a
man upon whose judgment he had always relied implicitly, who had been a
strong fortress in time of trouble. Such sentences had an incendiary,
blasphemous ring on Hilary Vane's lips--at first. It was as if the sky
had fallen, and the Northeastern had been wip