hich sprang from a natural solicitation for the welfare and
happiness of my only child. I shall be in Brampton in a day or two, and
I shall at once give myself the pleasure of calling on you. Sincerely
yours, Isaac D. Worthington."

Perhaps a little formal and pompous for some people, but an admirable
and conciliatory letter for the first citizen of Brampton. Written under
such trying circumstances, with I know not how many erasures and false
starts, it is little short of a marvel in art: neither too much said,
nor too little, for a relenting parent of Mr. Worthington's character,
and I doubt whether Talleyrand or Napoleon or even Machiavelli himself
could have surpassed it. The second letter, now that Mr. Worthington had
got into the swing, was more easily written. "My dear Robert" (it said),
"I have made up my mind to give my consent to your marriage to Miss
Wetherell, and I am ready to welcome you home, where I trust I shall
see you shortly. I have not been unimpressed by the determined manner in
which you have gone to work for yourself, but I believe that your place
is in Brampton, where I trust you will show the same energy in learning
to succeed me in the business which I have founded there as you have
exhibited in Mr. Broke's works. Affectionately, your Father."

A very creditable and handsome letter for a forgiving father. When Mr.
Worthington had finished it, and had addressed both the envelopes, his
shame and vexation had, curious to relate, very considerably abated.
Not to go too deeply into the somewhat contradictory mental and cardiac
processes of Mr. Worthington, he had somehow tricked himself by that
magic exercise of wielding his pen into thinking that he was doing a
noble and generous action: into believing that in the course of a very
few days--or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son
and have given Cynthia his blessing. He would, he told himself, have
been forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob,
dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works. Better
let the generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington's) side. At all events,
victory had never been bought more cheaply. Humiliation, in Mr.
Worthington's eyes, had an element of publicity in it, and this
episode had had none of that element; and Jethro Bass, moreover, was a
highwayman who had held a pistol to his head. In such logical manner he
gradually bolstered up again his habitual poise and dignity.