them some day, and when that fight comes, I
want to be in it."

He had grown very much excited; and it was as though this excitement
suddenly revealed to me the full extent of the change that had taken
place in him since he had left college. As he stood facing me, almost
glaring at me through his eye-glasses, I beheld a slim, nervous,
fault-finding doctrinaire, incapable of understanding the world as it
was, lacking the force of his pioneer forefathers. I rather pitied him.

"I'm sorry we can't look at this thing alike, Perry," I told him. "You've
said solve pretty hard things, but I realize that you hold your point of
view in good faith, and that you have come to me as an old friend. I hope
it won't make any difference in our personal relations."

"I don't see how it can help making a difference," he answered slowly.
His excitement had cooled abruptly: he seemed dazed. At this moment my
private stenographer entered to inform me that I was being called up on
the telephone from New York. "Well, you have more important affairs to
attend to, I won't bother you any more," he added.

"Hold on," I exclaimed, "this call can wait. I'd like to talk it over
with you."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use, Hugh," he said, and went out.

After talking with the New York client whose local interests I
represented I sat thinking over the conversation with Perry. Considering
Maude's intimacy with and affection for the Blackwoods, the affair was
awkward, opening up many uncomfortable possibilities; and it was the
prospect of discomfort that bothered me rather than regret for the
probable loss of Perry's friendship. I still believed myself to have an
affection for him: undoubtedly this was a sentimental remnant....

That evening after dinner Tom came in alone, and I suspected that Perry
had sent him. He was fidgety, ill at ease, and presently asked if I could
see him a moment in my study. Maude's glance followed us.

"Say, Hugh, this is pretty stiff," he blurted out characteristically,
when the door was closed.

"I suppose you mean the Riverside Franchise," I said. He looked up at me,
miserably, from the chair into which he had sunk, his hands in his
pockets.

"You'll forgive me for talking about it, won't you? You used to lecture
me once in a while at Cambridge, you know."

"That's all right--go ahead," I replied, trying to speak amiably.

"You know I've always admired you, Hugh,--I never had your ability," he
began painfu