Silas Bradford's Boy by Joseph C. Lincoln

He met several acquaintances during the walk from the office to the cottage on Mill Road. They bowed to him, two or three hailed him; one--it was Hayman--would have stopped to chat if he had received the least encouragement. But Banks, although he returned the bows and answered the hails, was scarcely conscious that he did so. Afterward, had he been asked to name the persons whom he met, he could not have done it. Outwardly he was quite himself; beyond the obvious fact that he was a trifle preoccupied and in a hurry, Mr. Sam Hayman noticed nothing peculiar in his manner. He agreed that it was a particularly fine day for the time of year, smiled pleasantly and hastened on, and the middle-aged undertaker and fire chief, who was still suffering rheumatic twinges in consequence of the cold he had contracted at the Truman fire, looked after him and envied his youth and good looks. It was wonderful to be twenty- six, strong, healthy, and care free.

But Samuel's envy might have been greatly lessened had he been able to look behind the smiling Bradford mask and read but a few of the thoughts whirling in the Bradford brain. They were so many and they whirled so fast! Captain Abijah had made an amazed and shocked comment upon his nephew's coolness in the face of the thunderbolt which had descended upon the family and set its ideal tottering. Banks had been cool then--cooler than his uncle, at least--for it was true that the exposure of the Golconda plot had not crushed him as completely as it had crushed Abijah.