y's hand. "You have done the best you
could, my son. It is peculiar and unbusinesslike, but we can't help
that."

"Will you explain to mother?"

"Yes, but the more I look at it the stranger it seems. I don't know,
however, that it is so strange after all. He is simply a chivalrous
crank of the South, and we must humor him. But I'll be glad when all
this nonsense is over."

DeGolyer sat in his room, smoking his pipe. He looked at his
reflection in the mirror, and said: "Oh, what a liar you are! But your
day for truth is coming."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE TIME WAS DRAWING NEAR.

One morning, when DeGolyer called at the hospital, young Witherspoon
said to him: "You are Hank, and I'm Henry." And this was the first
indication that his mind was regaining its health.

Every day George Witherspoon would ask: "Well, how's your peculiar
friend getting along?" And one evening, when he made this inquiry,
DeGolyer answered: "He is so much pleased that he doesn't think it
will take him quite three months to decide."

"Good enough, but why doesn't he decide now?"

"Because it would hardly be in keeping with his peculiar methods. I
haven't questioned him, but occasionally he drops a hint that leads me
to believe that he's satisfied."

DeGolyer was once tempted to tell Richmond and McGlenn that he was
feeling his way through a part that had been put upon him, but with
this impulse came a restraining thought--the play was not yet done.
They were at luncheon, and McGlenn had declared that DeGolyer was
sometimes strangely inconsistent.

"I admit that I am, John, and with an explanation I could make you
stare at me."

"Then let us have the explanation. Man was made to stare as well as to
mourn."

"No, not now; but it will come one of these days, though perhaps not
directly from me."

"Ah, you have killed a mysterious lion and made a riddle; but where
is the honey you found in the carcass? Give us the explanation."

"Not now. But one of these bleak Chicago days you and Richmond will
sit in the club, watch the whirling snow and discuss me, and you both
will say that you always thought there was something strange about
me."

"And we do," McGlenn replied. "Here's a millionaire's son, and he has
chosen toil instead of ease. Isn't that an anomaly, and isn't such an
anomaly a strange thing? But will the outcome of that vague something
cause us to hold you at a cooler length from us--will that 'I told you
so' result in y