"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively.
"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something."
Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one contract would have saved the day, and it was lost.
The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, the big plant was silent and deserted.
Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the Woodlawn porch.
"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this morning."
"What was in the papers?"
"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm brewin' when we missed the pay-day yesterday."
Tom started as if he had been stung.
"Missed the pay-day? Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to Louisville!"