strangely enough, notwithstanding the positiveness with which the
newspapers spoke, the facts agreed essentially with their
statements. Darwin K. Anthony and his son had quarrelled, they
were estranged; the young man did prefer idleness to industry.
Exactly as the published narratives related, he toiled not at all,
he spun nothing but excuses, he arrayed himself in sartorial
glory, and drove a yellow racing-car beyond the speed limit.

It was all true, only incomplete. Kirk Anthony's father had even
better reasons for his disapproval of the young man's behavior
than appeared. The fact was that Kirk's associates were of a sort
to worry any observant parent, and, moreover, he had acquired a
renown in that part of New York lying immediately west of Broadway
and north of Twenty-sixth Street which, in his father's opinion,
added not at all to the lustre of the family name. In particular,
Anthony, Sr., was prejudiced against a certain Higgins, who, of
course, was his son's boon companion, aid, and abettor. This young
gentleman was a lean, horse-faced senior, whose unbroken solemnity
of manner had more than once led strangers to mistake him for a
divinity student, though closer acquaintance proved him wholly
unmoral and rattle-brained. Mr. Higgins possessed a distorted
sense of humor and a crooked outlook upon life; while, so far as
had been discovered, he owned but two ambitions: one to whip a
policeman, the other to write a musical comedy. Neither seemed
likely of realization. As for the first, he was narrow-chested and
gangling, while a brief, disastrous experience on the college
paper had furnished a sad commentary upon the second.

Not to exaggerate, Darwin K. Anthony, the father, saw in the
person of Adelbert Higgins a budding criminal of rare precocity,