at man. For the present,
however, I shall be content with your assurance that you'll come back
to the bank eventually. Gradually, perhaps, you'll fall thence into
the vocation you were born for."

"I think I can promise so far as the bank is concerned," said Morgan,
slowly.

"Thank you," said his father and bent down to warm his hands in the
flames, so that the light shone on his face.

There was a silence. Scarcely a sound came to them here in this
lonely, bare garret. Morgan studied his father's face anxiously. How
silvery was the hair in places; and there were lines that had not been
there a year before. Both these signs seemed to accuse him louder than
any words.

"Father," he cried, "let me come closer to you."

CHAPTER VII.

The next evening Morgan sat pretending to be reading a book, his feet
sedulously planted on a new Turkey rug, which struck a startling note
of colour and decoration amid the bleakness of the attic. At last he
closed the volume and let it fall wearily on his knee. The visit of
his father had tried him severely. He had been shaken by a storm of
emotion, and it had left him somewhat shattered. And now that
Archibald had departed, an aching sense of loneliness had come to him
such as only comes to the man who lives thus isolated. He had been
able to leave his work for an hour in the middle of the day, so that,
including his usual dinner interval, he had passed two hours in his
father's company and seen him to his train. The old man had been
miserable in town; he couldn't bear to be so near Morgan yet cut off
from him all day, and, since he was far from well and needed the
comforts of his own home, it was decided between them he should go at
once.

At last Morgan threw down the book impatiently. He walked round the
room for a time, but could not rid himself of his restlessness. "My
soul is sick," he repeated again and again. "I need my friends." He
poked the fire and threw more coal on; he looked for awhile through
the panes of the window into the vague blackness of the March night.
And at last he bethought himself of getting ready his evening meal,
merely for the sake of concentrating himself on something. Just as he
was on the point of opening the cupboard, into which his father had
pried so jocularly, there came a timid tap at the door.

"Come in!" he cried, not quite certain that there _was_ anybody there.

As his invitation seemed to be complied with, he instinctively turne