"Yes," said Stacy dryly, "I think you didn't like his marriage. But I'm
glad your disinclination to see him isn't on account of that deal in
stocks."
"Oh no," said Van Loo. "Good-by."
But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a
cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a
little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing
could exceed Van Loo's protest of delight at the meeting; nothing
his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another
engagement. "But your old partner," he added, with a smile, "is waiting
for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping
you from him. So glad to see you; you're looking so well. Good-by!
Good-by!"
Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old
impetuousness into his former partner's room. Stacy, already deeply
absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and
Barker's arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished
and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray
ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick
return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and
returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive
fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked
at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined
mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs
already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still
more rigorous sombreness of color.
"Barker boy," he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which
the younger partner remembered, "I don't encourage stag dancing among my
young men during bank hours, and you'll please to remember that we are
not on Heavy Tree Hill"--
"Where," broke in Barker enthusiastically, "we were only overlooked by
the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice
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