At the height of his son’s success, old Josiah died, joining those silent members of the firm who had gone before.  I often like to imagine the whole seven of them, ghostly but inquisitive, following the subsequent strange proceedings with noiseless steps and eyes that missed nothing; and in particular keeping watch upon the last living Josiah Spencer—­a heavy, powerfully built man with a look of melancholy in his eyes and a way of sighing to himself as though asking a question, and then answering it with a muffled “Yes...  Yes...”  This may have been partly due to the past and partly due to the future, for the son whom he had brought home with him began to worry him—­a handsome young rascal who simply didn’t have the truth in him at times, and who was buying presents for girls almost before he was out of short trousers.

His name was Paul—­“Paul Vionel Olgavitch Spencer,” he sometimes proudly recited it, and whenever we heard of that we thought of his mother.

The older Paul grew, the handsomer he grew.  And the handsomer he grew, the wilder he became and the less the truth was in him.  At times he would go all right for a while, although he was always too fond of the river for his aunts’ peace of mind.

At a bend below the dam he had found a sheltered basin, covered with grass and edged with trees.  And there he liked to lie, staring up into the sky and dreaming those dreams of youth and adventure which are the heritage of us all.

Or else he would sit and watch the river, although he couldn’t do it long, for its swift movement seemed to fascinate him and excite him, and to arouse in him the desire to follow it—­to follow it wherever it went.  These were his quieter moods.

Ordinarily there was something gipsy-like, something Neck-or-Nothing about him.  A craving for excitement seemed to burn under him like a fire.  The full progression of correction marched upon him and failed to make impression:  arguments, orders, warnings, threats, threshings and the stoppage of funds:  none of these seemed to improve him in the least.

Josiah’s two sisters did their best, but they could do nothing, either.

“I wouldn’t whip him again, Josiah,” said Miss Cordelia one night, timidly laying her hand upon her brother’s arm.  “He’ll be all right when he’s a little older....  You know, dear ... you were rather wild, yourself ... when you were young....  Patty and I were only saying this morning that if he takes after you, there’s really nothing to worry about—­”

“He’s God’s own punishment,” said Josiah, looking up wildly.  “I know—­things I can’t tell you.  You remember what I say:  that boy will disgrace us all....”

He did.

One morning he suddenly and simply vanished with the factory pay-roll and one of the office stenographers.

In the next twelve months Josiah seemed to age at least twelve years—­his cousin Stanley watching him closely the while—­and then one day came the news that Paul Spencer had shot and killed a man, while attempting to hold him up, somewhere in British Columbia.