"Was my past reckless?" asked Fabian with sullen eyes.

"Never so reckless as mine. You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought
again, and now you're out against your father, fighting him."

"I had to come out or be crushed."

"I'm not so sure you won't be crushed now you're out. He plays boldly,
and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think
it won't be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as
most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead. Tarboe is
young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from
the bark on the tree. He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been
in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business."

Fabian threw out his arms. "But no! Father might live another ten
years--though I don't think so--and I couldn't have stood it. He was
lapping me in the mud."

"He doesn't lap Tarboe in the mud."

"No, and he wouldn't have lapped you in the mud, because you've got
imagination, and you think wide and long when you want to. But I'm
middle-class in business. I've got no genius for the game. He didn't
see my steady qualities were what was needed. He wanted me to be like
himself, an eagle, and I was only a robin red-breast."

Suddenly his eyes flashed and his teeth set. "You couldn't stand him,
wouldn't put up with his tyranny. You wanted to live your own life, and