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IN a suite of offices high up in the Union Mining Building in Kansas City, an old negro janitor was engaged in his humble evening tasks. Save for this ancient colored man the rooms were deserted. The place was unmistakably a center of large business interests. The dark, rich woods of the paneled wainscoting, heavy moldings, polished desks, and leather upholstered chairs, the bronze fixtures, steel filing cases, and massive vault door, all served to create an atmosphere of vast financial strength.

It was an evening in spring—one of those evenings when the cold discomforts of winter are far enough in the past to be forgotten while the hot discomforts of summer are so far in the future that no one need think of them. From homes and hotels and boarding houses, from apartments and tenements and rooms, the people were going forth to their pleasures and their crimes or to the toil of those who must labor in the night. Roaring street cars, screeching fire engines, clanging gongs, blaring horns, heavy murmuring undertone of the city’s life. Brilliantly illuminated restaurants, gleaming show windows, glittering, winking, flashing electric signs, dazzling arc lights, shadowy alleys, dark doorways, nooks and corners. Mighty rivers of hurrying, crowding, dodging pedestrians. Vociferous newsboys, furtive drabs with shame to sell, stolid merchants, slinking followers of nefarious trades, nurses, clergymen, sly beggars, laughing merrymakers, purveyors of vice, children, impassive policemen. As the old colored man with broom and dust cloth moved about the quiet office rooms he crooned the wailing melody of an old-time hymn.

Suddenly the old negro ceased his crooning song. Without straightening up from his stooping position over the desk which he was polishing he paused in an attitude of rigid alertness much like a good pointer dog, his gray woolly head cocked attentively to one side. It came again—the heavy, jarring rumble of distant thunder. Shuffling to the nearest window the old man looked into the night. Below him the city stretched away in the gloom like a dark, unfathomable sea. The shadowy masses of the higher buildings were misty headlands, the twinkling lights were stars reflected in the black depths, and the noise of the streets came up to him like the roar of the surf. A flash of lightning ripped the night and he saw the wind-tossed clouds.

“By Jack, hit sure am a-comin’,” the old man muttered nervously. “Yas sah—reg’lar ol’ rip-snorter—Bam! Lissen at dem hebenly guns! Lawdy—Lawdy! Dem big black clouds am sure a-pilin’ up—whoo-ee! Look lak de jedgment day am here right now—hit sure do. I knowed my ol’ rheumatiz warn’t lyin’ nohow—No sah—No sah!” He turned from the window and as his eyes took in the familiar rooms a wide grin deepened the wrinkles in his old, black face. “Ol’ man storm, he ain’t nohow gwine come in dese here offerces though—no sah! Rumble an’ grumble an’ shoot yo’ ol’ lightnin’ and blow yo’ ol’ wind twell yo’-all bus’ yo’sef—yo’-all ain’t gwine git ol’ Zac in here—no sah! Dem pore folkses outside, dey sure gwine ketch hit, though—yas indeedee—dey sure am!” Wagging his head sorrowfully he again stooped over the desk.

But scarcely had the old negro resumed his work when again he was interrupted. This time he jerked himself erect and faced about with a quick movement surprising in one of his years. Some one had entered the outer office. A moment later a man appeared in the open doorway of the room where the janitor stood.

“Good evening, Uncle Zac.” The man was smiling at the expression of the old servant’s face.

“Ev’nin’, boss—ev’nin’, Mista Matthews, sah.” He bobbed and grinned with genuine delight. “But what fo’ de lan’s sake fetches you down here at yo’ offerces dis time o’ night? An’ hit a-fixin’ to storm like all git out, directly, too. Lissen dar!” An ominous roll of thunder punctuated his remark.

“Does look like it meant business, doesn’t it?” Dan agreed, moving to the nearest window.

“Hit sure do, sah—hit sure do. An’ iffen you’ll ’scuse me, sah, yo’ ain’t got no call to be a-comin’ down town on er wil’ night like dis gwine be. Yo’ jes’ better hustle ’long back home, right now, fo’ de storm break. Yo’ kin tell Missus Hope ol’ Uncle Zac jes’ naturally discharged yo’ an’ yo’ quit.” He chuckled at the thought of discharging the boss, and Dan laughed with him.

“Why don’t you run home before the storm breaks, Uncle Zac?”

“Me? Me go home dis early? Why, Mista Matthews, sah, I ain’t near finish ma work yet.”

“My fix exactly,” returned Dan.

Another blinding flash of lightning was followed by a crashing peal of thunder. The old negro regarded his employer with an expression of proud hopelessness, the while he nodded his head solemnly. “Man’s work ain’t nebbah gwine be finish, I reckon—no sah—not when he’s that kin’ of man.”

Twenty years had passed since Judge Strong and his brother officials of the Strong Memorial Church in Corinth drove Dan Matthews from the ministry because he would not preach the kind of Christianity they wanted. But the years had worked little outward change in this son of Young Matt and Sammy Lane. “Big Dan,” he had been called in his backwoods home, and the name bestowed with so much admiration and affection by the Ozark mountaineers clung to him still. Not only to his intimate friends but to his employees—laborers, miners, officials, clerks, to the newsboys on the street, and to the kings of Big Business he was still Big Dan. True, there were touches of gray in the shaggy, red-brown hair. The sensitive mouth smiled not quite so readily, perhaps. But the brown eyes—his mother’s eyes—were still clear and steady and frank, with Sammy’s spirit looking out, questioning but unafraid. One knew instinctively that his nickname was not used in reference to his great body and powerful limbs, alone. The years had given him, too, a certain quiet air of authority—of responsibility and power. In that place of large business interests he was as a captain on the bridge of his ship, or a locomotive engineer in the cab of his engine.

“Missus Hope, she am well as allus, sah?”

“Very well, thank you, Uncle Zac.” Dan came and seated himself on a corner of a desk near the janitor. “She was asking about you at dinner this evening. I expect she’ll be going to see you and Aunt Mandy before long.”

The old negro’s face beamed with pride and delight. “Thankee, thankee, sah. Lawd bless her dear heart. Mus’ be mighty lonesome fo’ yo’ an’ Missus Hope, all ’lone in yo’ big house wi’ de boys an’ lil’ Missee Grace erway to dey schools an’ colleges.”

“It is that,” agreed Big Dan, “but I guess we’ll have to stand it, Uncle Zac. I suppose, next thing we know, we’ll wake up some morning and find that we are grandparents.”

“Go ’long wid yo’! Shoo! Hit warn’t more dan yest’day yo’ oldes’, Masta Grant, war a-layin’ in he cradle makin’ funny faces at ol’ Uncle Zac.”

They laughed together. Then Dan, with the same courtesy he would have shown one of his business associates, asked: “How are your folks, Uncle Zac? Aunt Mandy feelin’ pretty pert these days?”

“Sure am, sah. Ol’ woman feelin’ so persnickety almost kick up her heels an’ prance roun’ like yearlin’ filly, sted o’ behavin’ like ol’ work mare wid her chilluns all growed up an’ mighty nigh ready to be gran’pappies an’ gran’mammies theyselves.”

“Good for Aunt Mandy! And how are you making out with your old friend, rheumatiz?”

“Ben makin’ out fine, sah, twell las’ night, ol’ man rheumatiz he come roun’ prognosticatin’ this here storm.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sorry, Uncle Zac. Perhaps you had better lay off for—”

“No, sah—no, sah. Ain’t nobody gwine ’tend yo’ offerces but me, Mista Dan. Rheumatiz, he ain’t so bad, nohow—jes’ sort o’ weather projectin’. Ain’t hurt much. No rheumatiz in ma soul yet. Everythin’s all hunky-dory long ’s rheumatiz stay in man’s lags. Rheumatiz gits in de soul—whoo-ee—look out den! Yas, sah—yas, sah—dat am bad!”

“Well, there is nothing the matter with your soul, Uncle Zac.” Big Dan’s hand dropped gently on the toil-bent shoulders and the brown eyes of the boss looked smilingly down into the janitor’s wrinkled, upturned face. “It’s one of the cleanest, truest, whitest souls I know.”

“What’s dat, sah?” The old negro gazed at his employer with startled eagerness. “What’s dat yo’ sayin’, Mista Dan? White? Yo’ reckon ol’ nigger man like me can hab white soul?”

“Why not, Uncle Zac?”

The old man wiped his eyes with a corner of his dust cloth.

“Lawdy, Lawdy, Mista Dan, to think o’ yo’ sayin’ a thing like dat! White—Lawdy, Lawdy!”

“Well, Uncle Zac, I must get to work.” Dan crossed the room toward his private office.

“Yas, sah—yas, sah—we bof o’ us got to work.” With sudden energy Uncle Zac applied his dust cloth to the nearest piece of furniture. “Ol’ man storm, he gwine git to work too—mighty sudden now. Can’t cotch us in dis here place, though—no indeedee!”

“Mr. Saxton will be along presently. Tell him to come right on in, please.”

“Yas, sah—yas, sah.”

As the door closed behind Big Dan, Uncle Zac stood looking after him. “Ain’t dat jes’ like him now,” he muttered to himself. “Ain’t dat jes’ like him to think o’ a thing like dat? White—white—Praise de Lawd!”

The old negro janitor stooped vigorously to his task and again the distant roar of the city was accompanied by the crooning melody of an old-time hymn.