ut interest in its possibilities
of entertainment, but to-day his father's strange and sudden
preoccupation of manner ingulfed all the boy's thought. "What is it,
dad?" he asked, a tightening fear screwing down upon his brain as he
noted the change that had come over the mask that James Thorold's
face held to the world.

James Thorold made him no answer. He was standing at the wide walnut
table, turning over and over in his hands the letters which his
secretary had left for his perusal. Finally, he opened one of them,
the bulkiest. He scanned it for a moment, then flung it upon the floor.
Then he began to pace the room till in his striding he struck his foot
against the paper he had cast aside. He picked it up, tossing it toward
Peter. The boy turned from his strained watching of his father's face
to read the letter. It was the official notification of the Senate's
confirmation of the President's appointment of James Thorold as
ambassador to the Court of St. Jerome.

"Why, father!" Incredulity heightened the boyishness in Peter's tone.
James Thorold wheeled around until he faced him. "Peter," he said
huskily, "there's something you'll have to know before I go to
Forsland--if ever I go to Forsland. You'll have to decide." The boy
shrank from the ominous cadence of the words. "Why, I can't judge for
you, dad," he said awkwardly. "Our children are always our ultimate
judges," James Thorold said.

"I have sometimes wondered," he went on, speaking to himself rather than
to the puzzled boy, "how the disciples who met Christ but who did not go
his way with him to the end felt when they heard he had died. I knew a
great man once, Peter. I went his way for a little while, then I took my
own. I saw them bring him, dead, over the way they have brought that boy
to-day. I came down to the court-house that night, and there, just where
that boy lies, Peter, I made a promise that I have not kept."

Again he resumed his pacing, speaking as he went, sometimes in low
tones, sometimes with tensity of voice, always as if urged by some force
that was driving him from silence. The boy, leaning forward at the edge
of the chair, watched his father through the first part of the story.
Before the end came he turned away.

"You remember," James Thorold began, his voice pleading patience,
"that I've told you I came to Chicago from Ohio before the war? I was
older than you then, Peter, but I was something of a hero-worshipper,
too. Judge Adams