Manufacturing Company, which was the name of the property we had come to see about. The factory was situated at Deep Harbor, a thriving factory town on one of the Great Lakes. On the strength of the two reports my father signed the papers, and the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company became ours.

We were about to leave, when Knowlton turned to my father and said: "By the way, Mr. Jevons, I should like your authority, before you go, to employ a young research chemist for our laboratory out there at the plant. Some one capable of original work."

As Knowlton uttered these words a panic seized me. I knew before my father spoke what he was going to suggest.

"What about letting you have my son here?" I heard my father say. I could feel Knowlton looking me over, and I prayed for an unfavourable verdict.

"Have you had much experience in research work?" Knowlton levelled at me.

"Only a year," I faltered, wishing I could say "None."

Several other searching questions followed, which I answered as best I could. There was a moment's silence, during which I joyfully concluded that Knowlton did not care much for the look of me. It is difficult, now, to explain, but I did not want to go to Deep Harbor. My whole life, with the exception of the four years at college, had been spent in London, and I had no wish to be in any other place.

"Well," I heard Knowlton say, at last. "It is up to you, Mr. Jevons. I guess your son will fit the job."

My father turned to me.

"It's a heavy responsibility for you, Ted—but I had rather trust you than a stranger. We've got a lot at stake—in fact, all we've got in the world is at stake. Will you do it?"

I looked about the room vaguely, as if I expected to find an avenue of escape miraculously open before me. Instead, I saw Knowlton's shrewd face watching me. I felt an utter loathing and fear of the task laid upon me; yet I did not know how to refuse.

I stammered out at last: "I'll do my best, sir"—an empty-sounding formula to commit one to so much. Instinctively I knew that in uttering these words I was altering the whole course of my life.

My father was delighted by my reply. He shook me warmly by the hand and clapped me on the back.

"Ted, I know you. You'll make good out there. You've got to. And when you have, why, then you can come back to England and be your own boss."

Thus the matter was settled, without time for reflection.

That evening my father spent in giving me advice and further business details. The next morning he sailed for England again, and I was left behind to join Knowlton at the Grand Central Station at five o'clock, when the Limited was to leave that should carry us to Deep Harbor.

"The future is a terrifying thing," I thought as I went to bed that night.

Chapter Two

I SET OUT ALONG A NEW TRAIL

Sunset over the Hudson after a July thunderstorm; the observation platform of a Pullman, rushing toward a new and unknown world in the Middle West—such was the first stage of the trail leading to the heart of romance. Of course I did not know this then. In fact, the beauty of the sunset was considerably marred by the thought that the day before I had seen my father off for "home," for England, while I had been condemned to indefinite exile in a lake town famous for its manufacturing; and I felt much like the hero at the end of a certain type of Greek tragedy. No one could say when I should see England again, or once more browse along the bookstalls of Charing Cross Road, or drink a glass of stout at Scott's in Leicester Square. Not high ideals to long for, perhaps—but Charing Cross Road, the Empire on Leicester Square, or the noon-hour walks in Lincoln's Inn Fields, pausing perhaps for a quarter of an hour at the Soame Museum, or venturing as far as Chancery Lane, seemed to epitomize the things for which I was desperately homesick.

It had strained my loyalty to my father to the breaking point to accept the test he had put upon me. No word, however, of my resentment, of my sullen hatred for the task, had I allowed him to guess. He had gone aboard the steamer in one of his moods of extreme optimism—business would flourish as it never had before now I was to be at the helm. I had looked ruefully at the cancelled steamer ticket in my hand and had resolved to try, but in very truth I was sick at heart. As the boat left the dock, I turned away with some boyish tears in my eyes—and they were bitter tears. I hated and loathed, at that moment, the fate that had condemned me to the new venture. The roar and clang of the streets about the docks seemed symbols of all that was unlovely, of all that stood between me and what I wanted to do—symbols of the things I was to be mixed up with, no one knew for how long. Until I made the new business a success! It was easy to say—easy even for my father to pat me on the back and speak diffidently, as he looked the other way, of his confidence in me. He had so much more in me than I had in myself! I knew my own dangerous lack of ambition—my fondness for remaining a spectator, for doffing the world aside and bidding it pass; and here I was, entrusted with his future and that of my mother and sister.

What a plague had I to do with a factory and a manufacturing town on the Great Lakes? I knew nothing of either. All I asked was the moon—London, books, theatres, and the gorgeous solitude of rummaging in an enchanted cockney world. But that world could not be had, even in its simplest form, without money, and money I had to win in order to earn my right to the moon. There was nothing I had ever felt so incapable of winning. I knew I was full of a kind of inertia that terrified me. It would not matter to fail alone in such a task, but my failure would ruin my father—and others. And the inertia, the indifference, the hatred of it all frightened me. I knew it was no mood for success; yet I did not know how to fight against it.

"Now, Ted," said a crisp voice beside me, "we reach Deep Harbor at five-thirty A. M. That will give us time for breakfast, and get out to the factory by seven—when the whistle blows."

"Good heavens!" I thought with a start, coming back to the Pullman and reality with a horrible jerk. "Seven—" but words failed me.

"You'll have a chance to glance around the machine shop and pick out a location for the testing laboratory before the office force get down. Then we can have a look at the orders on the books and start making plans."

No time to get one's breath, no chance to edge into the cold water inch by inch—the thing was to be done at once. I was to jump from that Pullman platform into the deepest, coldest part of the stream.

"As soon as we've passed Storm King we'll go into the smoker and make a rough sketch of the laboratory lay-out, so we'll be ready for them in the morning."

I thought again of the ocean liner plunging in the opposite direction, and what my father was thinking at that moment. How had he dared trust me?

"Pshaw," said my companion, reading my thoughts with startling accuracy. "The Middle West isn't a bad place. You'll soon get used to it. Of course, it isn't Broadway," he added, with a sidelong look at me, "but you'll shake down all right. What do you think of the Hudson River? Nothing like this in England, I'll bet."

"Have you ever been there?" I parried.

"No. Little Old New York's good enough for me. I like live ones—not dead ones. There's Storm King over there—can you beat it? Look at the light over it—gosh, it's enough to make a fellow feel queer."

I looked; and the latter part of his remark was undoubtedly true. The thunder clouds still hung about in broken, irregular masses, through which radiated a startling copper glow, tapering off at the upper edges into green. The mountain itself was a dark shape sharply cut against the light side, while, beneath, the