“Tell me,” Carl bent and turned the log.  “What will you do now, Dick?  I know your head was turned a bit by the salary Starrett gave you, but you’ll not go back to that sort of work for a while anyway, will you?”

“No,” said Dick.  “If I knew something of scientific farming,” he added after a while, “I think I’d stay home.  Dad’s a doctor, a kindly, old-fashioned chap.  I—­I’d like to have you know him, Carl—­he’s a bully sort.  He’s living up there in Vermont on a farm that’s never been developed to its full possibilities.  It’s the best farm in the valley, but, you see, he hasn’t the time and he’s growing old—­”

“Why not take a course at an agricultural college?”

Wherry colored.

“I haven’t the money, Carl,” he acknowledged honestly.  “Most of Dad’s savings went to see me through college.  I’ve a little—­”

“Would a thousand a year see you through, with what you’ve got?” asked Carl quietly.

But Wherry did not answer.  He had walked away to the window, shaking.  Presently he turned back to the table, but his face was white and his eyes dark with agony.  Dropping into a chair he buried his face in his hands, unnerved at the end of his fight by Carl’s offer.

Wisely the man by the fire let him fight it out by himself and for an interval there was no sound in the quiet room save the crackle of the log and the great choking breaths of the boy by the table, whose head had fallen forward on his outstretched arms.

Carl threw his cigar into the fire and rose.

“Brace up, Dick!” he said at length.  “We’ve been touching the high spots up here and you were strung to a tension that had to break.”  He crossed to Wherry and laid his hand heavily on the boy’s heaving shoulder.  “Now, Dick, I want you to listen to me.  I’m going to see you through an agricultural college and you’re not going to tell me I can’t afford it.  I know it already.  But I’ve four thousand a year and that’s so far off from what I need to live in my way—­that a thousand or so one way or the other wouldn’t make any more difference than a snowflake in hell.  I owe you something anyway—­God knows!—­for supplying the model that sent you to perdition.  If you hadn’t paid me the ingenuous compliment of unremitting imitation, you’d have been a sight better off. . . .  And you’re going to marry the white little girl with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful, sweet forgiving decency of heart, and bring up a crowd of God-fearing youngsters, make over the old doctor’s farm for him—­and likely his life—­and begin afresh.  That’s all I ask.  Now to bed with you.”

Wherry wrung Carl’s hand, and after a passionate, incoherent storm of gratitude stumbled blindly from the room.

The old house grew very quiet.  Presently to the crackle of the fire and the wild noise of the wind outside was added the soft and melancholy lilt of a flute.  There was no mockery or impudence in the strain to-night.  It was curiously of a piece with the creaking loneliness of the ancient farmhouse and so soft at times that the clash of the frozen branches against the house engulfed it utterly.