I bought the ticket," he muttered. "It just come
over me--'you ought not to go to a place you got the idea of from
Jim,' something seemed to say to me, 'it's unlucky.' And everything
so still, and the stuff so easy--'twas like finding it in the road.
And the last time, too--the last time."

"But Jim--he thought--" Lindsay prompted. A dreadful curiosity
held him.

"So then he wrote, 'of course it's Yale, dad,' he wrote, 'we're all
going up together. You don't mind if it costs a little to get
settled, do you?' And was I going to go to him--he was head of his
class, mind you--and say, the Trust has treated me the way I
wouldn't treat a dog--it's all up with me and you? I can go back and
be foreman again at the works--we're bought up, chewed up and spit
out like a wad o' paper?' Not much, I guess. No. Here's where I quit
the honesty game, I said, for it don't pay. You stole my patent, and
I shut up because I couldn't afford to fight you, and you raised me
and raised me--and let me into the firm when you knew it was going
to bust! Now, I says, since my boy's education has been stole from
me, I'll steal it back, I says, and only from them that can afford
it, too! And I'll use no lawyer to do it, either, and we'll have no
trick-work with papers. I'll get it straight from the wives and
daughters of the big thieves that pass the plate on Sundays."

Lindsay listened to Caroline moving over their heads; her steps
seemed the only reality in this horrid dream.

"It--it will just about kill Jim," he said slowly.

"It would have killed him not to go to college," the man returned
sharply, "and he had a right to go."

"But, good heavens, there are ways--he could have earned money--he's
clever enough to work his way through a dozen colleges!" Lindsay
cried despairingly.

"There wasn't any working his way through for _my_ boy," said the
man, with a cunning grin; "I've done enough o' that for the family,
thank you. So did his mother--she died of it. No, there's money
enough for all, and it only needs a little planning. The thing is,
never take a risk. Wait for a sure thing. Take from the kind that
takes from _your_ kind--they'll never miss it. Work alone, and never
try to get too much. Who are the ones that get caught? The 'pals'!
No, I've just done for myself, and contented to sell at a big loss,
and only wanted to get my twenty-five hundred a year for Jim, and
something over for his vacations--those camps cost a lot--and enough