s a young boy, when on occasions he had wandered
into the cemetery, he used to stand before it with a lump in his throat
and bitter resentment in his heart, and once he had shaken his fist at
it. He had grown up out of sympathy with his father, but he had never
until now began to analyze the reasons for it. His father had given him
everything except that communion of which Cynthia spoke so feelingly. Mr.
Worthington had acted according to his lights: of all the people in the
world he thought first of his son. But his thoughts and care had been
alone of what the son would be to the world: how that son would carry on
the wealth and greatness of Isaac D. Worthington.

Bob had known this before, but it had had no such significance for him
then as now. He was by no means lacking in shrewdness, and as he had
grown older he had perceived clearly enough Mr. Worthington's reasons for
throwing him socially with the Duncans. Mr. Worthington had never been a
plain-spoken man, but he had as much as told his son that it was decreed
that he should marry the heiress of the state. There were other plans
connected with this. Mr. Worthington meant that his son should eventually
own the state itself, for he saw that the man who controlled the highways
of a state could snap his fingers at governor and council and legislature
and judiciary: could, indeed, do more--could own them even more
completely than Jethro Bass now owned them, and without effort. The
dividends would do the work: would canvass the counties and persuade this
man and that with sufficient eloquence. By such tokens it will be seen
that Isaac D. Worthington is destined to become great, though the
greatness will be akin to that possessed by those gentlemen who in past
ages had built castles across the highway between Venice and the North
Sea. All this was in store for Bob Worthington, if he could only be
brought to see it. These things would be given him, if he would but
confine his worship to the god of wealth.

We are running ahead, however, of Bob's reflections in Mr. Merrill's
parlor in Mount Vernon Street, and the ceremony of showing him the cities
of his world from Brampton hill was yet to be gone through. Bob knew his
father's plans only in a general way, but in the past week he had come to
know his father with a fair amount of thoroughness. If Isaac D.
Worthington had but chosen a worldly wife, he might have had a more
worldly son. As it was, Bob's thoughts were a litt