"I wonder if he knows about his father," mused he. Jane caught her
breath and looked at him with something like terror in her eyes.
He abruptly changed the subject, deploring his lapse into the past
from which they were trying to shield her.

The following morning Graydon received a note from Cable, a frank
but carefully worded message, in which he was invited to take the
trip East in the private car of the President of the Pacific, Lakes
& Atlantic. Mrs. Cable joined her husband in the invitation; one of
the sore spots in Graydon's conscience was healed by this exhibition
of kindness. Moreover, Cable stated that his party would delay
departure until Graydon's papers were passed upon and he was free
from red tape restrictions.

The young man, on landing, sent telegrams to his father and Elias
Droom, the latter having asked him to notify him as soon as he
reached San Francisco. Graydon was not a little puzzled by the fact
that the old clerk seemed strangely at variance with his father,
in respect to the future. In both telegrams, he announced that he
would start East as soon as possible.

There was a letter from Droom awaiting him at headquarters. It was
brief, but it specifically urged him to accept the place proposed
by Mr. Clegg, and reiterated his pressing command to the young man
to stop for a few days in Chicago. In broad and characteristically
uncouth sentences, he assured him that while the city held no
grudge against him, and that the young men would welcome him with
open arms--his groundless fears to the contrary--he would advise
him to choose New York. There was one rather sentimental allusion
to "old Broadway" and another to "Grennitch," as he wrote it. In