counsel."

Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant. Austen was
more than ever an enigma to him.

"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."

"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly. "I don't mind saying that
I would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
recognition of merit."

The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
his ability in so doing he had made a success in life. He could judge
motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses. But he left
Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was
a master. Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room. At one moment he
reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong
man of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries
of railroad practice from the beginning. But frankness was not an
ingredient of the Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the
kind of man who would accept a hint and a wink. Hilary Vane had formless
forebodings, and found himself for once in his life powerless to act.

The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
afford to keep a horse and buggy. The horse, which he tended himself,
was appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and
he was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
wont when he saw a thing he desired. He had been somewhat surprised and
not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
he had received.

On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the
conversation with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a
round clip through the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of
Tunbridge; the word "town" being used in the New England sense, as a
piece of territory about six miles by six. The fact that automobiles
full of laughing people from Leith hummed by occasionally made no
apparent difference to Pepper, who knew only the master hand on the
reins; the real