“How can he say anything to hurt you?” Mrs. Wither spoon asked.

“He can’t if he sticks to the truth.  But will he?  He may want to ruin the Colossus.  I will not go near him.  They may hang him and let him rot.  I will not go near him.  The truth is, I have been afraid of him.  The best of us have cause to fear the man we have placed too much confidence in.  Caroline, I’ll get up.”

“Not now, father.  The doctor said you must not get up to-day.”

“But does he suppose I’m going to lie here and let the Colossus run wild?  Got nobody to help me; nobody.”

“I will go down this morning and see that everything starts off all right,” said Henry.

“You will?  What do you know about it?  You could have known all about it, but what do you know now?”

“I should think that the heads of the departments understand their business; and I hope that I can at least represent you for a short time.”

“For a short time?  Oh, yes, a short time suits you exactly.  Ellen could do that, and I’d send her if she were at home.”  The girl was at Lake Geneva.  “Think you can go down and say, ’Wish you would open this door if you please’?  Think you can do that?”

The mother put up her hands as though she would protect her son against the merchant’s feelingless reproach.  For a time Henry sat looking hard in Witherspoon’s blood-shot eyes; and a thought, hot and anger-edged, strove for utterance, but an appealing gesture, a look from that gentle woman, turned his resentment into these consoling words, “Don’t worry.  I think I know my duty when it’s put before me.  The Colossus shall not suffer.”

How tenderly she looked at him.  She made a magnanimity of the cooling of his resentment and she gave him that sacred reward—­a mother’s gratefulness.

“All right,” said the merchant, “Do the best you can.”

His quick discernment had caught the play between Henry and Mrs. Witherspoon.  “Of course I don’t expect you to take my place.  I want you merely to show that the Witherspoon family hasn’t run away.”

The doctor called and found his patient much improved.  “A little rest is all you need to bring you about again,” the physician said.  “Your unsettled nerves have made you morbid.  Don’t worry.  Everything will be all right.”

The newspaper reports of the arrest of Brooks, although they proceeded to arraign and condemn him, had on Witherspoon’s nervous system more of a retoning effect than could have been brought about by a doctor’s skill.  That Brooks might be guilty, had not been the merchant’s fear; but that he himself might in some way be implicated, had been his morbid dread.  Now he could begin to recognize the truth that with a black beast of his own creation he had frightened himself; and he laughed with a nervous shudder.  But when the doctor was gone he again became anxious.

“Caroline, didn’t he ask if there had ever been any insanity in my family?”