Father Richmond laughed.
"Good-night, my son"; and he went downstairs with the others.
"Colonel, you asleep?" the Boy asked softly.
"No."
He struggled in silence with his mucklucks. Presently, "Isn't it frightfully strange," he mused aloud. "Doesn't it pull a fella up by the roots, somehow, to see Americans on this old track?"
The Colonel had the bedclothes drawn up to his eyes. Under the white quilt he made some undistinguishable sound, but he kept his eyes fastened on his pardner.
"Everything that we Americans have done, everything that we are, is achieved by the grace of goin' bang the other way." The Boy pulled off a muckluck and threw it half across the room. "And yet, and yet—"
He sat with one stocking-foot in his hand and stared at the candle.
"I wonder, Colonel, if it satisfies anybody to be a hustler and a millionaire."