a mint?"

"I don't understand what you mean, Walter," Mrs. Adams
interposed, perplexed and distressed. "If your father had the
money, of course he'd need every cent of it, especially just now,
and, anyhow, you could scarcely expect him to give it to you,
unless you told us what you want with it. But he hasn't got it."

"All right," Walter said; and after standing a moment more, in
silence, he added, impersonally, "I don't see as you ever did
anything much for me, anyhow--either of you."

Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon
them, walked away quickly, and was at once lost to their sight in
the darkness.

"There's a fine boy to've had the trouble of raising!" Adams
grumbled. "Just crazy, that's all."

"What in the world do you suppose he wants all that money for?"
his wife said, wonderingly. "I can't imagine what he could DO
with it. I wonder----" She paused. "I wonder if he----"

"If he what?" Adams prompted her irritably.

"If he COULD have bad--associates."

"God knows!" said Adams. "_I_ don't! It just looks to me like
he had something in him I don't understand. You can't keep your
eye on a boy all the time in a city this size, not a boy Walter's