swarmed out in
the morning and in at eventide. Then it was a lodging-house, and shabby
people let themselves out and in at all hours of the day and night. And
last of all it had become a tenement-house, and had fallen into line
with its neighbors to left and right, and the window-panes were broken,
and the curse of misery and poverty and utter degradation had fallen
upon it.

But still it lifted its grand stone front, still it stood, broad and
great, among all the houses in the street. And it was the old man's
custom, after he had stood on the opposite sidewalk and gazed at it for
a while, to go to a little French _cafe_ a block to the eastward, and
there to take a glass of _vermouth gomme_--it was a mild drink, and
pleasing to an old man. Sometimes he chanced to find some one in this
place who would listen to his talk about the old house--he was very
grand; but they were decent people who went to that _cafe_, and perhaps
would go back with him a block and look at it. We would not have talked
to chance people in an east-side French _cafe_. But then we have never
owned such a house, and lost it--and everything else.

* * * * *

Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand sat in his studio, working
enthusiastically on a "composition." A new school of art had invaded New
York, and compositions were everything, for the moment, whether they
composed anything or nothing. He heard a nervous rattling at his
door-knob, and he opened the door. A young woman lifted a sweet,
flushed, frightened face to his.

"Oh, John," she cried, "father hasn't come home yet, and it's five
o'clock, and he left home at nine."

John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and got into his coat.

"We'll find him; don't worry, dear," he said.

They found him within an hour. The great city, having no further use for
the old Dolph house, was crowding it out of existence. With the crashing
of falling bricks, and the creaking of the tackle that swung the great
beams downward, the old house was crumbling into a gap between two high
walls. Already you could see through to where the bright new bricks
were piled at the back to build the huge eight-story factory that was to
take its place. But it was not to see this demolition that the crowd was
gathered, filling the narrow street. It stood, dense, ugly, vulgar,
stolidly intent, gazing at the windows of the house opposite--a poor
tenement house.

As they went up the steps they