And while they laughed and chatted and feasted the hour away, across the street Andrew sat with his eyes looking over on to the major’s red roof which was shrouded in a mist of yesterdays through which he was watching a slender boy toil his way.  When he was eight he had carried a long route of the daily paper and he could feel now the chill dark air out into which he had slipped as his mother stood at the door and watched him down the street with sad and hungry eyes, the gaunt mother who had never smiled.  He had fought and punched and scuffled in the dawn for his bundle of papers; and he had fought and scuffled for all he had got of life for many years.  But a result had come—­and it was rich.  How he had managed an education he could hardly see himself; only the major had helped.  Not much, but just enough to make it possible.  And David had always stood by.

Kildare’s fortune had come from some almost forgotten lumber lands that his father had failed to heave into the Confederate maelstrom.  Perhaps it had come a little soon for the very best upbuilding of the character of David Kildare, but he had stood shoulder to shoulder with them all in the fight for the establishment of the new order of things and his generosity with himself and his wealth had been superb.  The delight with which he made a gift of himself to any cause whatsoever, rather tended to blight the prospects of what might have been a brilliant career at law.  With his backing Hobson Capers had opened the cotton mills on a margin of no capital and much grit.  Then Tom Cantrell had begun stock manipulations on a few blocks of gas and water, which his mother and Andrew had put up the money to buy—­and nerve.

It was good to think of them all now in the perspective of the then.  Were there any people on earth who could swing the pendulum like those scions of the wilderness cavaliers and do it with such dignity?  He was tasting an aftermath and he found it sweet—­only the bitterness that had killed his mother before he was ten.  And across the street sat the daughter of the man who had pressed the cup to her lips—­with her father’s millions and her mother’s purple eyes.

He dropped his hand on his manuscript and began to write feverishly.  Then in a moment he paused.  The Panama campfire, beside which he had written his first play, that was running in New York now, rose in a vision.  Was it any wonder that the managers had jumped at the chance to produce the first drama from the country’s newly acquired jungle?  The lines had been rife with the struggle and intrigue of the great canal cutting.  It really was a ripping play he told himself with a smile—­and this other?  He looked at it a moment in a detached way.  This other throbbed.

He gathered the papers together in his hand and walked to the window.  The sun was now aslant through the trees.  It was late and they must have all gone their ways from across the street; only the major would be alone and appreciative.  Andrew smiled quizzically as he regarded the pages in his hand—­but it was all so to the good to read the stuff to the old fellow with his Immortals ranged round!