t a man twice so strong as his father--_ach, Gott_,
what--what's the use? I'm gone, Becky, gone!"

Mr. Isadore Binswanger swung to his feet and regarded his parent with
the dazed eyes of a sleepwalker awakening on a perilous ledge.

"Aw, pa, for--for God's sake, why didn't you tell a fellow? I--we--aw,
pa, I--I can knuckle down if I got to. Gee whiz! how was a fellow to
know? You--you been cuttin' up about everything since--since we was
kids; aw, pa--please--gimme a chance, pa, I can knuckle down--pa--pa!"

He approached the racked form of his father as if he would throw himself
a stepping-stone at his feet, and then because his voice stuck in his
throat and ached until the tears sprang to his eyes he turned suddenly
and went out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

The echo hung for a moment.

Miss Binswanger lay whitely in her chair, weakened as if the blood had
flowed out of her heart. From the granitoid square at the base of the
air-shaft came the rattle of after-dinner dishes and the babble of
dialect. Mr. Binswanger wept the tears of physical weakness.

"I--I'm gone, Becky. What you want for Poil I can't do. I'm gone under.
We got to start over again. It was the interurban done it, Becky. I
needed new capital to meet the new competition. I--I could have stood up
under it then, Becky, but--but--"

"_Ach_, my husband--for myself I don't care. _Ach_, my husband."

"I--I'm gone, Becky--gone."

He rose to his feet and shambled feebly to his bedroom, his fingers
feeling of the furniture for support, and his breath coming in the long
wheezes of dry tears. And in the cradle of her mother's arms Miss
Binswanger wept the hot tears of black despair; they seeped through the
showy lace yoke and scalded her mother's heart.

"Oh, my baby! _Ach_, my husband! A good man like him, a good man like
him!"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't--cry."

"Nothing he ever refused me, and now when we should be able to do for
our children and--"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't cry."

"If--if he had the money--for a boy like Max--he'd give it, Poil. Such a
good husband--such--_ach_, I go me in to papa now--poor papa. I've been
bad, Poil; we must make it up to him; we--"

"'Sh-h-h!"

"We got to start over again, Poil--to the bone I'll work my fingers,
I--"

"'Shh-h-h, mamma,'sh-h-h--somebody's knocking."

They raised their tear-ravaged faces in the attitude of listening, their
eyes salt-bitten and glazed.

"It's--it's Izzy, baby.