"The old man's not quite fit to-day," he said. "I ought to have told you. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there by himself doping out something. Won't say two words to me."
"Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore," said the boy, with the ghost of his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoying at all.
"Look here, Neil," he surprised himself by saying, "I like you. I always did. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang. You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do for you——"
"Maybe there is, Theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say. "Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for the Judge, I start in next week."
"But the Judge turned you down." Mr. Burr's brain struggled with the problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too evidently not achieving it. "The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn't take you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd be afraid to. Everard——"
"I start in next week," repeated Mr. Donovan.
"But what did you say to him?" demanded Mr. Burr. "What did he say to you? How did you dare to ask him again?"
"I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theodore. I haven't been trying any black magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'm going to learn a good deal. I've got to. Nobody knows how much. Even the Judge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but I didn't ask him." Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know that this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge and more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined young man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, and without pride:
"I just told him so."
Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young associate somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do something equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said to him at last, "Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember I told you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickings here for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you," was inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind, near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.