home--come home--"

He remembered when he had first heard this song in a play called _Ten
Nights in a Bar-Room_, many years before, and how it had wrenched his
heart and soul, and covered him with a sudden cloud of shame and anger.
For his father had been a drunkard, and his brother had grown up a
drunkard, that brother whom he had not seen for ten years until--until--

He shuddered, closed his eyes, as though to shut out something that the
mind saw. He had had a rough life, he had become inured to the seamy side
of things--there was a seamy side even in this clean, free, wide land; and
he had no sentimentality; though something seemed to hurt and shame him
now.

"As soon as your day's work was done.
Come home--come home--"

The crowd was uproarious. The exhilaration had become a kind of delirium.
Men were losing their heads; there was an element of irresponsibility in
the new outbreak likely to breed some violent act, which every man of them
would lament when sober again.

Nettlewood Foyle watched the dust rising from the wheels of the stage,
which had passed the elevator and was nearing the Prairie Home Hotel, far
down the street. He would soon leave behind him this noisy ribaldry of
which he was the centre. He tossed his cheroot away. Suddenly he heard a
low voice behind him.

"Why don't you hit out, sergeant?" it said.

He started almost violently, and turned round. Then his face flushed, his
eyes blurred with feeling and deep surprise, and his lips parted in a
whispered exclamation and greeting.

A girl's face from the shade of the sitting-room was looking out at him,
half smiling, but with heightened color and a suppressed agitation. The
girl was not more than twenty-five, graceful, supple, and strong. Her chin
was dimpled; across her right temple was a slight scar. She had eyes of a
wonderful deep blue; they seemed to swim with light. As Foyle gazed at her
for a moment dumfounded, with a quizzical suggestion and smiling still a
little more, she said:

"You used to be a little quicker, Nett." The voice appeared to attempt
unconcern; but it quivered from a force of feeling underneath. It was so
long since she had seen him.

He was about to reply, but, at the instant, a reveller pushed him with a
foot behind the knees so that they were sprung forward. The crowd
laughed--all save Billy Goat, who knew his man.

Like lightning, and with cold fury in his eyes, Foyle c