“A thousand times better!” answered Overholt, almost cheerfully.

“I’m glad.  Maybe you’ll feel like working on the City a little after supper.”

“I was afraid Hope had given us up to-day, and had flown away for good and all,” said the inventor.  “But you’ve brought her home with you again, bless you!  Yes, we’ll do some work after supper, and after you go to bed I’ll just have one more good evening with the Motor before I give it up for ever.”

Newton looked up.

“You aren’t going to give it up for ever,” he said in a tone of conviction.  “You can’t.”

Overholt explained calmly enough that he must sell the machine for old metal the very next day, and sell the tools too.  But the boy shook his head.

“You’ll curl up and die if you do that,” he said.  “Besides, if mother were here she wouldn’t let you do it, so you oughtn’t to.  The reason why she’s gone to be a governess is because she wouldn’t let you give up the Motor, father.  You know it is.”

“Yes.  It’s true—­but—­” he hesitated.

“You simply can’t do it, that’s all.  So I’m perfectly certain you won’t!  I believe everything will come round all right, anyway, if you only don’t worry.  That’s what I believe, father.”

“It’s a hopeful view, at all events.  The only objection to it is that it’s a good deal like dreaming, and I’ve no right to dream any more.  When you see that I’m going to, you must make me sit up and mind my lesson!”

He even laughed a little, and it was not badly done, considering that he did it on purpose to show how he meant to make the best of it all, though Hope would not do anything for him.  He ate something too, if only to keep the hungry boy company.

They went into the workshop, and found the bright moonlight streaming through the window that looked east.  It fell full on the motionless Motor, under its plate-glass case, and turned all the steel and brass to silver and gold, and from the clean snow that covered the desolateness of the yard outside the moon sent a white reflection upwards that mingled with the direct moonlight in a ghostly sort of way.  Newton stood still and looked at the machine, while Overholt felt about for matches.

“If only it would begin to move now, just of itself!”

The man knew that it would not, and wished that the boy would not even suggest such a thing, and he sighed as he lit the lamp.  But all the same he meant to spend half the night in taking a last farewell of the engine, and of all the parts on which he had spent months and years, only to let them be broken up for old metal in the end.

The two sat down on each side of the little City and went to work to build the railway station; and after all, when Overholt looked at the Common and the College and remembered how happy he had been there, he began to feel that since dreams were nothing but dreams, except that they were a great waste of time and money, and of energy and endurance, he might possibly find some happiness again in the old life, if he could only get back to it.