Therefore, Farr, a stranger in that land, seeking knowledge with which to arm his resolve, went and sat with Citizen Drew and learned many things.

Sometimes loquacity carried Citizen Drew a bit afield from the highway of politics, and when he touched on the case of Captain Andrew Kilgour Farr’s heart thumped and his eyes glistened.  For Drew prefaced the bit of a story with this: 

“I never knew Symonds Dodd to do anything toward squaring a wrong he had committed except when he gave Kate Kilgour a fine position in his office.  And there are those who say that he was only showing more of his selfishness when he hired her; he wanted the prettiest girl in the city to match his office furnishings.”

“I have seen her,” said Farr, trying to be matter-of-fact.  “I—­I sort of wondered!”

“Her father was a friend of mine.  He was a good man.  And the Consolidated money couldn’t buy him.  His people were Kilgowers in Scotland and he was a man not given to much talk, but he was willing to let me run on, nodding his head now and then while he smoked.  He was an honest man and the best engineer in the state, and he kept his own counsel in all things.  And he showed me the Kilgower coat of arms—­and he didn’t show that to many.  He was no boaster.  He was proud of his people, but he used to say that it made but little difference who the ancestors were unless the descendants copied the virtues and tried to improve over the faults.  There was a Kilgower who went down across the border and gave himself as a hostage so that the clan might gain time—­and he knew that he would be hung—­and he was.  But he saved his people.  And I wish you would remember that, Mr. Farr, for it explains a bit the state of mind of Andrew Kilgour.

“He wouldn’t sell himself for the gang’s dirty work—­he made honest reports.  So they did for him, Mr. Farr.  And he couldn’t afford to have them do for him, because his wife was vain and a spendthrift and he let her waste and spend because he was a good and simple man when it came to the matter of a woman’s domination over him.  That’s the curse on strong men—­they are tender when it comes to a woman.  She wasn’t worthy of him, his wife.  It’s the daughter who has his honesty.  I think if she knew who had done for her father she would not stay in Symonds Dodd’s office.  But the gang does for a man most often without leaving the trail open when they run away and hide.

“He would come here and sit with me and smoke and was very silent.  I knew there were debts and I knew well enough that the woman wanted him to sell himself.

“He raked and scraped money—­he sold everything of his own, his instruments and all.  He took out every cent of insurance that money would buy.  Then he put prussic acid in a capsule—­a shell of salol, I believe they said it was—­so that the work of the poison would be delayed, and he swallowed the capsule on the street and went into an office and sat and chatted with friends and joked and laughed much more than was his habit till at last his eyes closed and his face grew white and he fell out of his chair upon the floor stone-dead, and never uttered a groan.