' What am I telling you? Do you think I got no EYES?" And
Adams hammered the table again. "Why, you knew the boy was weak----"

"I did not!"

"Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at my leaving the way
I did. You kept him there after you suspected him; and you had him
watched; you let him go on; just waited to catch him and ruin him!"

"You're crazy!" the old man bellowed. "I didn't know there was anything
against the boy till last night. You're CRAZY, I say!"

Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over his haggard forehead and
bloodshot eyes; with his bruised hands pounding the table and flying in
a hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his feet shuffled constantly
to preserve his balance upon staggering legs, he was the picture of a
man with a mind gone to rags.

"Maybe I AM crazy!" he cried, his voice breaking and quavering. "Maybe
I am, but I wouldn't stand there and taunt a man with it if I'd done to
him what you've done to me! Just look at me: I worked all my life for
you, and what I did when I quit never harmed you--it didn't make two
cents' worth o' difference in your life and it looked like it'd mean all
the difference in the world to my family--and now look what you've DONE
to me for it! I tell you, Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to
another man the way I looked up to you the whole o' my life, but I don't
look up to you any more! You think you got a fine day of it now, riding
up in your automobile to look at that sign--and then over here at my
poor little works that you've ruined. But listen to me just this
one last time!" The cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the
gesticulating hands fluttered uncontrollably. "Just you listen!" he
panted. "You think I did you a bad turn, and now you got me ruined for
it, and you got my works ruined, and my family ruined; and if anybody'd
'a' told me this time last year I'd ever say such a thing to you I'd
called him a dang liar, but I DO say it: I say you've acted toward me
like--like a--a doggone mean--man!"

His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able to do him this final
service; then he sank, crumpled, into the chair by the table, his chin
down hard upon his chest.

"I tell you, you're crazy!" Lamb said again. "I never in the world----"
But he checked himself, staring in sudden perplexity at his accuser.
"Look here!" he said. "What's the matter of you? Have you got another of
those----?" He put his hand upon Adams's shoulder, whi