the past: the house in which he had lived,
the gardens and orchards in which he once had taken pride, his
ambitious projects for village improvement.

"You shall have it all back, father!" she promised him, with
passionate resolve. "And it will only be a little while to wait,
now."

Thus encouraged, the prisoner's horizon widened, day by day. He
appeared, indeed, to almost forget the prison, so busy was he in
recalling trivial details and unimportant memories of events long
since past. He babbled incessantly of his old neighbors, calling them
by name, and chuckling feebly as he told her of their foibles and
peculiarities.

"But we must give them every cent of the money, father," she
insisted; "we must make everything right."

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes, we'll fix it up somehow with the creditors," he
would say.

Then he would scowl and rub his shorn head with his tremulous old
hands.

"What did they do with the house, Margaret?" he asked, over and over,
a furtive gleam of anxiety in his eyes. "They didn't tear it down;
did they?"

He waxed increasingly anxious on this point as the years of his
imprisonment dwindled at last to months. And then her dream had
unexpectedly come true. She had money--plenty of it--and nothing
stood in the way. She could never forget the day she told him about
the house. Always she had tried to quiet him with vague promises and
imagined descriptions of a place she had completely forgotten.

"The house is ours, father," she assured him, jubilantly. "And I am
having it painted on the outside."

"You are having it painted on the outside, Margaret? Was that
necessary, already?"

"Yes, father.... But I am Lydia. Don't you remember? I am your little
girl, grown up."

"Yes, yes, of course. You are like your mother-- And you are having
the house painted? Who's doing the job?"

She told him the man's name and he laughed rather immoderately.

"He'll do you on the white lead, if you don't watch him," he said. "I
know Asa Todd. Talk about frauds-- You must be sure he puts honest
linseed oil in the paint. He won't, unless you watch him."

"I'll see to it, father."

"But whatever you do, don't let 'em into my room," he went on, after
a frowning pause.

"You mean your library, father? I'm having the ceiling whitened.
It--it needed it."

"I mean my bedroom, child. I won't have workmen pottering about in
there."

"But you won't mind if they paint the woodwork, father? It--has grown
quite ye