d speculations are the first to
cry out against the millionaire. The rich man must pay for the
privilege of being rich."

The statement was sent to the city press. It reminded the public of
the abduction of Henry Witherspoon; touched upon the sensation created
at the time, and upon the long season of interest that had followed;
explained the part which the uncle had played, and delicately gave his
cause for playing it. And the return of the wanderer was set forth
with graphic directness.

At noon the merchant and Henry ate luncheon in a club where thick rugs
hushed a foot-fall into a mere whisper of a walk, where servants,
grave of countenance and low of voice, seemed to underscore the
chilliness of the place. Henry was introduced to a number of
astonished men, who said that they welcomed him home, and who
immediately began to talk about something else; and he was shown
through the large library, where a solitary man sat looking at the
pictures in a comic weekly. After leaving the club they went to a
tailor's shop, and then drove over the boulevards and through the
parks. Witherspoon, with no pronounced degree of pride, had conducted
Henry through the Colossus; he had been pleased, of course, at the
young man's astonishment, and he must have been moved by a strong
surge of self-glorification when his son wondered at the broadness of
the Witherspoon empire, yet he had held in a strong subjection all
signs of an unseemly pride. But when he struck the boulevard system,
his dignified reserve went to pieces.

"Finest on earth; no doubt about that. Oh, of course, many years of
talk and thousands of pages of print have paved the Paris boulevards
with peculiar interest, but wipe out association, and where would they
be in comparison with these? Look at that stretch. And a few years ago
this land could have been picked up for almost nothing. Look at those
flowers."

It was now past midsummmer, but no suggestion of a coming blight lay
upon the flower-beds. "Look at those trees. Why, in time they will
knock the New Haven elms completely out."

CHAPTER IX.

THE INTERVIEWERS.

When they reached home at evening they found that five reporters had
been shown into the library and were waiting for them.

"Glad to see you, gentlemen," said Witherspoon, smiling in his way of
pleasant dismissal, "but really that statement contains all that it is
necessary for the public to know. We don't want to make a sensation of
it, y