Caleb chuckled.  “That’s one time you missed the whole side o’ the barn, Buddy.  I was settin’ here wonderin’ if a man ever did get over bein’ surprised at the way his children turn out.”

“Meaning me?” said Tom, knocking the ash from his pipe and feeling in his pockets for a cigar.

“Yes, meanin’ you, son.  You’ve somehow got away from me again in these last six months ’r so.”

“I’m older, pappy; and I hope I’m bigger and broader.  I was a good bit of a kid a year ago; tough in some spots and fearfully and wonderfully raw in others.  Do you recollect how I climbed up on the fence the first dash out of the box and read off the law to you about religion and such things?”

“I reckon so,” said the iron-master.  “And that’s one o’ the things—­I ain’t heard you cuss out the hypocrites once since you got back.  Have you gone back on the Dutchman and his argyment?”

“Bauer, you mean?—­no; only on the nullifying part of it.  Bauer’s no-religion doctrine is a doctrine of denial, and it’s pure theory.  What we have to deal with in this world is the practical human fact, and a good half of that is tangled up with some sort of religious belief or sentiment.  At least, that’s the way I’m finding it.”

“It’s the way it is,” said Caleb sententiously.  And after a pause:  “I allow it helps some, too; greases the wheels some if it don’t do anything more.”

“It does much more,” was the quick reply.  “When you find it in a woman like Ardea Dabney, it raises her to the seventh power angelic.  It is only when you find it, or some ghastly imitation of it, in such people as the Farleys....”  He changed the subject abruptly.  “You said the Dabneys had gone up on the mountain for the summer, didn’t you?”

“Yes.  I believe they’re allowin’ to come back in August, in time for the weddin’.”

The younger man’s wince was purely involuntary.  He had been trying latterly to train up to the degree of mental fitness which would enable him to think calmly of Ardea as another man’s wife.  The effort commended itself as a part of the new broadening process, but it was not entirely successful.

“You wrote me the Farleys would be back this month, didn’t you?” he asked.

“The fifteenth,” said Caleb; smoking reflectively through another long pause before he added.  “And then come the business fireworks.  Have you made up your mind what-all you’re goin’ to do, Buddy?”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, as if this were merely a matter in passing.  “We’ll consolidate the two plants and the coal-mine, if it’s agreeable all around.”

The iron-master took a fresh hitch in his chair.  Truly, this was a retransformed Tom; a creature totally and radically different from the college junior who had sweltered through the industrial battle of the previous summer, breathing out curses and threatenings.

“Was you allowin’ to let Colonel Duxbury climb into all three o’ the saddles?” he inquired, keeping his emotions out of his voice as he could.