successful to the Croesus
mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and
hospitals, gift-givers to their fellow men, irreproachable in private
life, and yet apparently stone blind on the side of the larger equities.
Could it be possible that such men deliberately admitted and accepted
the double standard in morals? It seemed fairly incredible, and yet
their lives appeared to proclaim it.

When the president had finished his apology for those who bow the head
in the house of Rimmon, Tom rose to take his bit of approved paper
around to the cashier's window. The bridge was built, and he meant to
cross it; but he was honest enough, or blunt enough, to give his own
point of view in a crisp sentence or two.

"I wish I could look at it in some such way as you do, Mr. Henniker, but
I can't," he objected. "To me it is just plain bribery; the corrupting
of officials who have sworn, among other things, to administer their
offices honestly. I'm immoral, or unmoral, enough to yield to the
apparent necessity, but it is quite without prejudice to a firm
conviction that I am no better than the men I am going to purchase."

Having obtained the sinews of war, he kept the appointment with Norman,
and their joint discussion of the business situation made him too late
for the early dinner at Woodlawn. To complete the delay, the evening
train lost half an hour with a hot box at a point a mile short of
Gordonia. Two things came of these combined time-killings: a man in a
slouched hat and the brown jeans of the mountaineers, who had been
watching the Woodlawn gates since dusk from his hiding-place behind the
field wall across the pike, got up stiffly and went away; and Tom
reached home just in time to intercept Ardea on the steps of the
picturesque veranda.

"Been visiting the little mother?" he asked, when she paused on the step
above him.

"Yes--no; I ran over to tell you that we moved Nancy to-day."

"Oh! Well, that's comfortable. She was willing?"

"Y-es: almost, at first; and altogether willing when I told her that
I--that she--" There was an embarrassed moment and then the truth came
out. "Perhaps I should have asked you first: but she was quite satisfied
when I told her that she owed her changed condition to the person whose
duty it was to provide for her. You don't mind, do you?"

The question was almost a beseechment; but Tom was thinking of something
else.

"No, I don't mind," he said absently, an