Tom sat glooming over it for a time, shrouding himself in tobacco smoke.  Then he said: 

“You feazed me a little at first; but I think I know now what has happened.”

Caleb took time to let the remark sink in.  It carried inferences.

“Buddy, I been suspectin’ for a good while back that you know more about this sudden smash-up than you’ve let on.  Do you?”

“I know all about it,” was the quiet rejoinder.

“You do?  What on top o’ God’s green earth—­”

Tom held up his hand for silence.  A man had let himself in at the roadway gate and was walking rapidly up the path to the house.  It was Norman; and after a few hurried words in private with Tom, he went as he had come, declining Caleb’s invitation to stay and smoke a pipe on the veranda.

When the gate latch clicked at Norman’s outgoing, Tom had risen and was knocking the ash from his pipe and buttoning his coat.

“I was admitting that I knew,” he said.  “I can tell you more now than I could a moment ago, because the time for which I have been waiting has come.  You remarked that you thought the Farleys were at the end of their rope.  They were not until to-day, but to-day they are.  Every piece of property they have, including Warwick Lodge, is mortgaged to the hilt, and this afternoon Colonel Duxbury put his Chiawassee stock into Henniker’s hands as security for a final loan—­so Norman tells me.  Perhaps it would interest you a trifle to know something about the figure at which Henniker accepted it.”

“It would, for a fact, Buddy.”

“Well, he took it for less than the annual dividend that it earned the year we ran the plant; and between us two, he’s scared to death, at that.”

“Heavens and earth!  Why, Buddy, son! we’re plum’ ruined—­and so’s old Major Dabney!”

Tom had finished buttoning his coat and was settling his soft hat on his head.

“Don’t you worry, pappy,” he said, with a touch of the old boyish assurance.  “Our part, since Colonel Duxbury saw fit to freeze us out, is to say nothing and saw wood.  If the Major comes to you, you can tell him that my word to him holds good:  he can have par for Ardea’s stock any time he wants it, and he could have it just the same if Chiawassee were wiped off of the map—­as it’s going to be.”

“But Tom; tell me—­”

“Not yet, pappy; be patient just a little while longer and you shall know all there is to tell.  I’m leaving you with a clear conscience to say to any one who asks that you don’t know.”

Caleb had struggled up out of his chair, and now he laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“I ain’t askin’, Buddy,” he said, with a tremulous quaver in his voice; “I ain’t askin’ a livin’ thing.  I’m just a-hopin’—­hopin’ I’ll wake up bime-by and find it’s on’y a bad dream.”  Then, with sudden and agonizing emphasis:  “My God, son! they been butcherin’ one ’nother down yonder for four long weeks!”