“Your son!” exclaimed Mr. Flint.  “So your son, the son of the man who has been my legal adviser and confidant and friend for thirty years, is going to join the Crewel and Tootings in their assaults on established decency and order!  He’s out for cheap political preferment, too, is he?  By thunder!  I thought that he had some such thing in his mind when he came in here and threw his pass in my face and took that Meader suit.  I don’t mind telling you that he’s the man I’ve been afraid of all along.  He’s got a head on him—­I saw that at the start.  I trusted to you to control him, and this is how you do it.”

It was characteristic of the Honourable Hilary, when confronting an angry man, to grow cooler as the other’s temper increased.

“I don’t want to control him,” he said.

“I guess you couldn’t,” retorted Mr. Flint.

“That’s a better way of putting it,” replied the Honourable Hilary, “I couldn’t.”

The chief counsel for the Northeastern Railroads got up and went to the window, where he stood for some time with his back turned to the president.  Then Hilary Vane faced about.

“Mr. Flint,” he began, in his peculiar deep and resonant voice, “you’ve said some things to-day that I won’t forget.  I want to tell you, first of all, that I admire my son.”

“I thought so,” Mr. Flint interrupted.

“And more than that,” the Honourable Hilary continued, “I prophesy that the time will come when you’ll admire him.  Austen Vane never did an underhanded thing in his life—­or committed a mean action.  He’s be’n wild, but he’s always told me the truth.  I’ve done him injustice a good many times, but I won’t stand up and listen to another man do him injustice.”  Here he paused, and picked up his bag.  “I’m going down to Ripton to write out my resignation as counsel for your roads, and as soon as you can find another man to act, I shall consider it accepted.”

It is difficult to put down on paper the sensations of the president of the Northeastern Railroads as he listened to these words from a man with whom he had been in business relations for over a quarter of a century, a man upon whose judgment he had always relied implicitly, who had been a strong fortress in time of trouble.  Such sentences had an incendiary, blasphemous ring on Hilary Vane’s lips—­at first.  It was as if the sky had fallen, and the Northeastern had been wiped out of existence.

Mr. Flint’s feelings were, in a sense, akin to those of a traveller by sea who wakens out of a sound sleep in his cabin, with peculiar and unpleasant sensations, which he gradually discovers are due to cold water, and he realizes that the boat on which he is travelling is sinking.

The Honourable Hilary, with his bag, was halfway to the door, when Mr. Flint crossed the room in three strides and seized him by the arm.

“Hold on, Vane,” he said, speaking with some difficulty; “I’m—­I’m a little upset this morning, and my temper got the best of me.  You and I have been good friends for too many years for us to part this way.  Sit down a minute, for God’s sake, and let’s cool off.  I didn’t intend to say what I did.  I apologize.”