in the new and impatient order of things, and none but old-timers
and his particular cronies were aware of the fact that he had
another side to his character. It was not generally known, for
instance, that he was a kind and indulgent father and had a
daughter whom he worshiped with blind adulation. This ignorance
was not strange, for Miss Barbara Parker had been away at college
for four years now, and during that time she had not once returned
home.

There was a perfectly good reason for this protracted separation
of father and daughter; since Old Tom was no longer on pay, it
took all he could rake and scrape to meet her bills, and railroad
fares are high. That Hudson River institution was indeed a
finishing school; not only had it polished off Barbara, but also
it had about administered the _coup de grace_ to her father. There
had been a ranch over near Electra with some "shallow production,"
from which Tom had derived a small royalty--this was when Barbara
Parker went East and before the Burk-burnett wells hit deep sand
--but income from that source had been used up faster than it had
come in, and "Bob," as Tom insisted upon calling her, would have
had to come home had it not been for an interesting discovery on
her father's part--_viz._, the discovery of a quaint device of the
law entitled a "mortgage." Mortgages had to do with a department
of the law unfamiliar to Tom, his wit, his intelligence, and his
dexterity of hand having been exercised solely in upholding the
dignity of the criminal branch, but once he had realized that a
mortgage, so called, was no more than a meaningless banking term
used to cloak the impulsive generosity of moneyed men, he availed
himself of this discovery and was duly grateful.