Silas Winkle unlocked his door before he spoke. Then he turned to his old friend's son and shook his hand warmly.
"Good-bye," he said, looking at him steadily. "Good-bye, Johnnie. I see it only comes on you at odd spells. Come up to Meadville for a while and I think you will get over it altogether. Your father was the clearest-headed man I ever saw and you seem to have lucid intervals. Those last remarks of yours were worthy of your father, my boy," and the old man patted him softly on the back.
John Boler whistled all the way downstairs. Then he laughed.
"I wonder if old Winkle really does think I am off my base," said he, as he took down his hat. "I suppose we are all more or less crazy. He thinks I am and I know he is. It is a crazy world. Only lunatics could plan or conduct it on its present lines." And he laughed again and then sighed and passed out into the human stream on Broadway.
THE TIME LOCK OF OUR ANCESTORS.
"Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."—Bible.
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Nellie. I am sure it can be no great wrong you have done. Girls like you are too apt to be morbid. No doubt we all do it, whatever it is. I'm sure I shall not blame you when you tell me. Perhaps I shall say you are quite right—that is, if there is any right and wrong to it, and provided I know which is which, after I hear the whole story—as most likely I shall not. Right—"
And here the elder woman smiled a little satirically, and looked out of the window with a far-away gaze, as if she were retravelling through vast spaces of time and experience far beyond anything her friend could comprehend.
The evening shadows had gathered, and cast, as they will, a spell of gravity and exchange of confidences over the two.