lph's affairs. I want to let
the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
trusteeships."

Thus at father's death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
the stocks known as "The Randolph's" fluttered a point because of that, to
the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father's fortune
other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
millions and a half a year.

Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.

"Not yet, Jim," he replied. "I've got my seat and about a hundred thousand
capital, and I want to feel that I'm free to kick my heels until I have
raked together an even million all of my own making; then I'll settle down
with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
happens along about that time--well, then it will be 'An ivy-covered
little cot' for mine."

He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
Bob's orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
presence of:

A soul by honour schooled,
A heart by passion ruled--

but he never seemed to see it. As my wife--for I had been three years
married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
I knew what marriage was for--never tired of saying, "Poor Bob! He's
woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
direction."

"Then again, Jim," he continued in a tone of great seriousness, "there's a
little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
yet--not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph & Randolph. Yes, you
may laugh--you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
than he could use, stake his land and slaves--yes, and grandmother's
too--on a card-game, and--lose, and