"I will step down to the counting-house during the course of the day," said the young man. "I trust Mr. Stevens is well?"
"Quite well," said the man.
This luminous quality which Anthony felt the man threw off also lit up his eyes. They were deep-set eyes, light in color and full of pain; in them a pale hope seemed constantly lifting itself through shadows, only to sink again.
"Is there anything more?" asked Anthony, as the other lingered.
The man shook his head, but did not move.
"I am Tom Horn," said he. "As a boy, I worked as clerk for your grandfather. And now I am clerk again."
There was an oddity in this simple statement that supplied a missing portion of Anthony's conception of the man. Surely he was not quite firm in his mind.
"In your grandfather's time," said Tom Horn, "the circles flowed freely about the world. They were wide and wonderful, and the sun and the wind and the stars were in them." He bent closer to Anthony: "Do you know what makes the wind to blow?" he asked.
"No," said Anthony.
"No more does any one else," said Tom Horn. "No one in all the world knows what makes the wind to blow. And no one knows why water flows in circles, and rings in every ship, every island, and every man. Once," he said, "I saw a circle around the moon. The world moves in a circle. I do, too. I began as a clerk; and I am a clerk once more."