of his smile.
The faces of the young man and the old man were close together and they
were standing in much the same attitude, giving an effect of likeness in
more than physiognomy. That note of John Prather's voice that had sounded
so familiar to Jack was a note in the father's voice when he was
particularly suave.

"This is the end--that is the understanding--the end?" demanded John
Wingfield, Sr.

"Oh, quite!" John Prather answered easily, moving toward the door. He
did not offer his hand, nor did John Wingfield, Sr. offer to take it.
But as he went out he said, his smile broadening: "I hope that Jack
makes a success with the store, though he never could run it as well as
I could. Good-by!"

"Good-by!" gasped John Wingfield, Sr.

He wheeled around distractedly and stood still, his head bowed, his
fingers working nervously before his hands parted in a shrugging,
outspread gesture of relief; then, his head rising, his body stiffening,
once more his arbitrary self, he started up the stairs with the firm yet
elastic step with which he mounted the flights of the store.

If Jack remained where he was they would meet. What purpose in questions
now? The answer to all might be as false as to one. He was no more in a
mood to trust himself with a word to his father than he had been to trust
himself with a word to John Prather. He dropped back into the darkness
of the dining-room and sank into a chair. When a bedroom door upstairs
had closed softly he was sequestered in silence with his thoughts.

His own father had lied to him! Lied blandly! Lied with eyes limpid with
appeal! And the supreme commandment on which his mother had ever insisted
was truth. The least infraction of it she would not forgive; it was the
only thing for which she had ever punished him. He recalled the one
occasion when she had seemed harsh and merciless, as she said:

"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may torture
and kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward--and never
be a coward, Jack, never be afraid!"

At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he came
home, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of student
comradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails run
straight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst and
fatigue and distance, men spoke straight.

And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back,
definite of form