a
brief silence and the handy-man swung about on his heel.

"Good night, boss!" he said over his shoulder, as he moved off.

Langham made no answer, but long after Joe's shuffling steps had died
away in the distance he was still standing there irresolute and
undecided, staring fixedly off into the darkness that had swallowed up
the handy-man's hulking figure.

Mr. Montgomery, muttering somewhat and wagging his head, continued along
the track for a matter of a hundred yards, when his feet found a narrow
path which led off in the direction of the light he had so confidently
declared was his old woman's. Then presently as he shuffled forward, the
other seven houses of the row of which his was the eighth, cloaked in
utter darkness, took shadowy form against the sky. The handy-man
stumbled into his unkempt front yard, its metes and bounds but
indifferently defined by the remnants of what had been a picket fence;
he made his way to the side door, which he threw open without ceremony.
As he had surmised, his old woman was up. She was seated by the table in
the corner, engaged in mending the ragged trousers belonging to Joseph
Montgomery, junior.

At sight of Joe, senior, she screamed and flung them aside; then white
and shaking she came weakly to her feet. The handy-man grinned genially.
He was not of demonstrative temperament.

"Joe!" cried Nellie, as she sprang toward him. "Dear Joe!" and she threw
her arms about him.

"Oh, hell!" said the handy-man.

Nellie was hanging limply about his neck and he was aware that she had
kissed him; he could not remember when before she had taken such a
liberty. Mr. Montgomery believed in a reasonable display of affection,
but kissing seemed to him a singularly frivolous practice.

"Oh, my man!" sobbed Nellie.

"Oh, cheese it, and let me loose--I don't like this to-do! Can't a
married man come home without all this fuss?"

"Dear Joe, you've come back to me and your babies!" And the tears
streamed down her cheeks.

"I don't need you to tell me that--I got plenty sense enough to know
when I'm home!" said Montgomery, not without bitterness.

"I mourned you like you was passed away, until your letter come!" said
Nellie, and the memory of her sufferings set her sobbing afresh.

"Oh, great hell!" exclaimed Joe dejectedly. "Why can't you act
cheerful? What's the good of takin' on, anyhow--I don't like tombstone
talk."

"It was just the shock of seein' you standin' there in the doo