whole affair.




CHAPTER II.


When George Barker returned to the outer ward of the financial
stronghold he had penetrated, with its curving sweep of counters, brass
railings, and wirework screens defended by the spruce clerks behind
them, he was again impressed with the position of the man he had just
quitted, and for a moment hesitated, with an inclination to go back.
It was with no idea of making a further appeal to his old comrade,
but--what would have been odd in any other nature but his--he was
affected by a sense that HE might have been unfair and selfish in his
manner to the man panoplied by these defenses, and who was in a measure
forced to be a part of them. He would like to have returned and condoled
with him. The clerks, who were heartlessly familiar with the anxious
bearing of the men who sought interviews with their chief, both before
and after, smiled with the whispered conviction that the fresh and
ingenuous young stranger had been "chucked" like others until they
met his kindly, tolerant, and even superior eyes, and were puzzled.
Meanwhile Barker, who had that sublime, natural quality of abstraction
over small impertinences which is more exasperating than studied
indifference, after his brief hesitation passed out unconcernedly
through the swinging mahogany doors into the blowy street. Here the wind
and rain revived him; the bank and its curt refusal were forgotten; he
walked onward with only a smiling memory of his partner as in the old
days. He remembered how Stacy had burned down their old cabin rather