Jerome gave an astonished glance at him as he went into the study, whose door stood open.  Doctor Prescott was seated at his desk, his back towards the entrance.

“Good-evening.  Sit down,” he said, curtly, without turning his head.

“Good-evening, sir,” replied Jerome, but remained standing.  He stood still, and stared, with that curious retrospection into which the mind can often be diverted from even its intensest channels, at the cases of leather-bound books and the grimy medicine-bottles, green and brown with the sediments of old doses, which had so impressed him in his childhood.  He saw, with an acute throb of memory, the old valerian bottle, catching the light like liquid ruby.  He had stepped back so completely into his past, of a little, pitiful suppliant, yet never wholly intimidated, boy, in this gloomy, pungent interior, that he started, as across a chasm of time, when the doctor arose, came forward, and spoke again.  “Be seated,” he said, with an imperious wave towards a chair, and took one for himself.

Jerome sat down; in spite of himself, as he looked at the doctor opposite, the same old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood.  He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power.  There was, in truth, something majestic about the man—­he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy was genuine.  The czar of a little New England village may be as real in quality as the Czar of all the Russias.

The doctor began to speak, moving his finely cut lips with clear precision.

“I understand,” said he, “that you have fulfilled the promise which you made in my presence several years ago, to give away twenty-five thousand dollars, should such a sum be given to you.  Am I right in so understanding?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know that the instrument, drawn up by Lawyer Means at that time is illegal, that no obligation stated therein could be enforced?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who told you—­Mr. Means?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Before you gave the money or after?”

“Before.”

“You know that I am not under the slightest legal restriction to give the sum for which I stand pledged in that instrument, even though you have fulfilled your part of the agreement.”

“It depends upon what you consider a legal restriction.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I make no promise which is not a legal restriction upon myself,” replied Jerome, with a proud look at the other man.

“Neither do I,” returned the doctor, with a look as proud; “but your remark is simply a quibble, which we will pass over.  I say again, that I am under no legal restriction, in the common acceptance of that term, to give a fourth part of my property to the poor of this town.  That you admit?”

Jerome nodded.