“I have tried, I mean I'm afraid I'm—that I am not quite up to it, as I used to be. I get confused—and—” The old bookkeeper's lips were white and quivering. He could not get on with his story.
“Here, take these away,” roared Maitland.
Gathering up the sheets with fingers that trembled helplessly, Wickes crept hurriedly out through the door, leaving a man behind him furiously, helplessly struggling in the relentless grip of his conscience, lashed with a sense of his own injustice. His anger which had found vent upon his old bookkeeper he knew was due another man, a man with whom at any cost he could never allow himself to be angry. The next two hours were bad hours for Grant Maitland.
As the quitting whistle blew a tap came again to the office door. It was Wickes, with a paper in his hand. Without a word he laid the paper upon his chief's desk and turned away. Maitland glanced over it rapidly.
“Wickes, what does this nonsense mean?” His chief's voice arrested him. He turned again to the desk.
“I don't think—I have come to feel, sir, that I am not able for my job. I do not see as how I can go on.” Maitland's brows frowned upon the sheet. Slowly he picked up the paper, tore it across and tossed it into the waste basket.
“Wickes, you are an old fool—and,” he added in a voice that grew husky, “I am another and worse.”
“But, sir—” began Wickes, in hurried tones.
“Oh, cut it all out, Wickes,” said Maitland impatiently. “You know I won't stand for that. But what can we do? He saved my boy's life—”
“Yes, sir, and he was with my Stephen at the last, and—” The old man's voice suddenly broke.