“Yes,” said Van Loo, with a polite hesitation as he halted at the door.  “He was—­I think—­er—­in your employ at Heavy Tree Hill.”

“Nonsense!  He was my partner.  And you must have known him since at Boomville.  Come!  He got forty shares of Ditch stock—­through you—­at 110, which were worth about 80!  Somebody must have made money enough by it to remember him.”

“I was only speaking of him socially,” said Van Loo, with a deprecating smile.  “You know he married a young woman—­the hotel-keeper’s daughter, who used to wait at the table—­and after my mother and sister came out to keep house for me at Boomville it was quite impossible for me to see much of him, for he seldom went out without his wife, you know.”

“Yes,” said Stacy dryly, “I think you didn’t like his marriage.  But I’m glad your disinclination to see him isn’t on account of that deal in stocks.”

“Oh no,” said Van Loo.  “Good-by.”

But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him.  Nothing could exceed Van Loo’s protest of delight at the meeting; nothing his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another engagement.  “But your old partner,” he added, with a smile, “is waiting for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping you from him.  So glad to see you; you’re looking so well.  Good-by!  Good-by!”

Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old impetuousness into his former partner’s room.  Stacy, already deeply absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and Barker’s arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished and half-angry man looked up.  But when his eyes met the laughing gray ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive fashion of former days.  Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still more rigorous sombreness of color.

“Barker boy,” he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which the younger partner remembered, “I don’t encourage stag dancing among my young men during bank hours, and you’ll please to remember that we are not on Heavy Tree Hill”—­

“Where,” broke in Barker enthusiastically, “we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly a mile by the trail.”

“And was generally an oath!” said Stacy.  “But you’re in San Francisco now.  Where are you stopping?” He took up a pencil and held it over a memorandum pad awaitingly.