"There is no other way, my friend," said Simmy earnestly.
Thorpe was silent for a long time, staring out over the dark waters of the bay. The sun had slipped down behind the ridge of hills to the south and west, and the once bright sea was now cold and sinister and unsmiling. The boats were stealing in from its unfriendly wastes.
"I had not thought of it in that light, Simmy," he said at length. "My grandfather said it might take two hundred years."
"Incidentally," said Simmy, shrewdly, "your grandfather knew what he was about when he put in the provision that you were to have twenty-five thousand dollars a year as a salary, so to speak. He was a far-seeing man. He knew that you would have a hard, uphill struggle before you got on your feet to stay. He may even have calculated on a lifetime, my friend. That's why he put in the twenty-five. He probably realised that you'd be too idiotic to use the money except as a means to bring about the millennium, and so he said to himself 'I'll have to do something to keep the damn' fool from starving.' You needn't have any scruples about taking your pay, old boy. You've got to live, you know. I think I've got the old gentleman's idea pretty—"
"Well, let's drop the subject for to-night, Simmy," said Thorpe, coming to his feet. His chin was up and his shoulders thrown back as he breathed deeply and fully of the new life that seemed to spring up mysteriously from nowhere. "You'll spend the night with me. There is a spare bed and you'll—"
"Isn't there a Ritz in the place?" inquired Simmy, scarcely able to conceal his joy.
"Not so that you can notice it," replied Thorpe gaily. He walked to the edge of the porch and drank in more of that strange, puzzling air that came from vast distances and filled his lungs as they had never been filled before.
Simmy watched him narrowly in the failing light. After a moment he sank back comfortably in the old rocking chair and smiled as a cat might smile in contemplating a captive mouse. The rest would be easy. Thorpe would go back with him. That was all that he wanted, and perhaps more than he expected. As for old Templeton Thorpe's "foundation," he did not give it a moment's thought. Time would attend to that. Time would kill it, so what was the use worrying. He prided himself on having done the job very neatly,—and he was smart enough to let the matter rest.
"What is the news in town?" asked Braden, turning suddenly. There was a new ring in his voice. He was eager for news of the town!
"Well," said Simmy naively, "there is so much to tell I don't believe I could get it all out before dinner."