"Sometimes I believe I'm a fool--and sometimes things like this bother
me. They say they are training Kenyon--on the other side! Of course he
just has what music Laura and Mrs. Nesbit could give him; yet the other
day, he got hold of a piano score of Schubert's Symphony in B flat and
while he can't play it, he just sits and cries over it--it means so much
to the little fellow."

The gray head wagged and the clear, old, blue eyes looked out through
the steel-rimmed glasses and he sighed: "He is going ahead, making up
the most wonderful music--it seems to me, and writing it down when he
can't play it--writing the whole score for it--and they tell me--" he
explained deprecatingly, "my friends on the other side, that the child
will make a name for himself." He paused and asked: "George--you're a
hardheaded man--what do you think of it? You don't think I'm crazy, do
you, George?"

The younger man glanced up, caught the clear, kindly eye of Amos Adams
looking questioningly down.

"Dad," said Mr. Brotherton, hammering his fat fist on the desk,
"'there's more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your
philosophy, Horatio'--well say, man--that's Shakespeare. We sell more
Shakespeares than all the other poets combined. Fine business, this
Shakespeare. And when a man holds the lead in the trade as this
Shakespeare has done ever since I went into the Red Line poets back in
the eighties--I'm pretty nearly going to stay by him. And when he says,
'Don't be too damn sure you know it all--' or words to that effect--and
holds the trade saying it--well, say, man--your spook friends are all
right with me, only say," Mr. Brotherton shuddered, "I'd die if one came
gliding up to me and asked for a chew of my eating tobacco--the way they
do with you!"

"Well," smiled Amos Adams, "much obliged to you, George--I just wanted
your ideas. Laura Van Dorn has sent Kenyon's last piece back to Boston
to see if by any chance he couldn't unconsciously have taken it from
something or some one. She says it's wonderful--but, of course," the old
man scratched his chin, "Laura and Bedelia Nesbit are just as likely to
be fooled in music as I am with my controls." Then the subject drifted
into politics--the local politics of the town, the Van Dorn-Nesbit
contest.

And at the end of their discussion Amos rubbed his bony, lean, hard, old
hands, and looked away through the books and the brick wall and the
whole row of buildings before him into