mustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks were
falling from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skin
was drawing up, most that the inner energy which had vitalized his walk
and gestures was his no longer.

In the mind, too--though no one perceived that, he least of all--had
come a change. Here and there, a cell had disintegrated and collapsed.
They were not the cells which vitalized his business sense. They lay
deeper down; it was as though their very disuse for thirty years had
weakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed on
Trinity Churchyard, and especially upon that modest shaft of granite,
three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk clicked
off the valuable seconds, and the electric clock on the wall jumped to
mark the passing minutes. "Click-click" from the desk--seventy-eight
cents--"Click-click"--one dollar and fifty-seven cents--"Clack" from
the wall--forty-seven dollars.

Presently, when watch and clock had chronicled four hundred and seventy
dollars of wasted time, he leaned back, looked for a moment on the
brazen September heavens above, and sighed. He might then have turned
back to his desk and the table of gross earnings, but for his
secretary.

"Mr. Bulger outside, sir," said the secretary.

"All right!" responded Mr. Norcross. In him, those two words spoke
enthusiasm; usually, a gesture or a nod was enough to bar or admit a
visitor to the royal presence. Hard behind the secretary, entered with
a bound and a breeze, Mr. Arthur Bulger. He was a tall man about
forty-five if you studied him carefully, no more than thirty-five if