For the Old Boy knows that a voice and curly hair are mortgages on a young man's soul that few young fellows ever pay off.
Now there was neither curly head nor music in all the Barclay tribe, and when John sang "Through the trees the night winds murmur, murmur low and sweet," his mother could shut her eyes and hear Uncle Leander, the black sheep of three generations of Thatchers.

So that the fact that John had something over a thousand dollars to put in General Hendricks' bank, and owned half a dozen town lots in the various additions to the town, made the mother thankful for the Grandfather Barclay's blood in him.

But she saw a soul growing into the boy's face that frightened her.

What others admired as strength she feared, for she knew it was ruthlessness.

What others called shrewdness she, remembering his Grandfather Barclay, knew might grow into blind, cruel greed, and when she thought of his voice and his curly hair, and recalled Uncle Leander, the curly-headed, singing ne'er-do-well of her family, and then in the boy's hardening mouth and his canine jaw saw Grandfather Barclay sneering at her, she was uncertain which blood she feared most.