ere were many ways--not legal
--in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the
Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of
him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and other young
men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office found that
Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain class of their
labours. In fact, father and son were not much nearer in spirit than when
ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton. Caution and an
instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of gentlemen in Mr.
Vane's business.

So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions into
the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of Tom
Gaylord and others. During this period Austen was more than once assailed
by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper County, Mr.
Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring vengeance of
a corporal nature. But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen Vane stuck to
his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many aspects of a
situation which he had not before suspected. He had long foreseen,
however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement with his
father was inevitable. In addition to the difference in temperament,
Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to another.

It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a
seeming chance. It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton. The grove was bounded on one side
by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second growth and
alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing. The picnic was over and
the people preparing to go home when they were startled by a crash,
followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past the grove
and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the grade. The
women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing, and the men left
their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then stood for the
moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their eyes. The wagon
of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a man (a farmer of
the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what seemed a mortal
injury. Amid the lamentations and cries for some one to go to Mercer
Village for the