"I might have stayed till I learned how to write it for her," he says; and all at once is tremendously sorry that it is too late to do this; too late to knock on the cottage door and be welcomed by the old dame to the cheerful room; to show he would keep his promise; too late to leave pull-down and trample-under behind him and begin all over again.
Just this far Tim Cannon lets his musings lead him; then fiercely, in a scorn of his own musings and loneliness, rouses up to sit a while, cross-legged, darting deliberately the untamable blue eye to the dark corners, and listening, as if daring all these bright memories, which would lure him from his purpose of being boss like Regan, to come out in the open and halt him.
Presently in cold defiance of them he tears across the page of yellowed writing; no doubt, remembering Dan, a spirit looks wistfully down upon the vagabond with the scroll in his fist. Again and again he tears deliberately. The very scratches of Molly's message are tatters. Tim Cannon is himself again.
And the great door at the end of the building rolls back and a towering figure stands whipping in the storm; slowly he comes up to the lantern; the visitor is Regan.
"Where is Craney, who owns the car line?" he asks.
"He is gone; I am the manager," says Tim, rising. And after he has explained, "No matter," nods Regan.
At the great man's feet lies his mother's message, and as he muses with resentment and wonder that circumstances should drive him here to parley with a ragged boy on the highway of his destiny the last tatters drift away on the draft which has followed him in from the storm. 'T is a ghostly way Fate has with things neglected.
"The car line could be made to pay," begins Regan craftily, "and I might risk a few dollars to buy it in."
"Craney would sell if he was by," replies the boy.
"No matter; you can put through the deal as his manager, making all the money for yourself. Perhaps fifty dollars," says Regan, careful not to overbid and make Tim think the deal of too great importance.