be a next time. If you fail him now, he may never seek you out again. Can't you see that to-night, sitting in that police station among the utter ruin of his hopes, he's at a crossroads of his life?"
"I see it," said Mrs. Quinby.
Mr. Quinby, after a moment, sighed and sat down. "It seems," he said bitterly, "that a father is not supposed to have any feelings."
"Feelings?" Tom Woods leaned across the table. "He must have feeling and understanding, sympathy and wisdom, patience and faith. There isn't a bigger job in the world than being a father, and there isn't a job that is so often slighted. If a man has a business that's going bad he'll sit up all night with it, plan and scheme for ways and means to put it on its feet, stick to it through years of discouragement, and call no effort too great that offers a chance for success. But let his boy kick over the traces and his patience evaporates, his faith wabbles, his sympathy dies, his understanding clouds, and he says, 'I wash my hands of you.' He doesn't say this to his business; yet if his business failed he might resurrect it. But failure with his son might be failure forever.
"Great Christopher! what have you been thinking of? Father and son live in different worlds. The man sees life through the dearly-bought wisdom of experience; the boy sees only a fairyland in which everything is honest, and true, and pos-
