s temptations, his griefs:
he would get a transfer to some Southern train, he would steal a ride,
but he would go. His mother's pride would suffer when she saw what he
had become, but he was not bringing her home a shameful story. She would
ask to see his beautiful creations--alas! even his ideals were buried
under grime and smoke, their voices drowned in whistles and bells! He
folded his arms across his breast, the last sheet of the long letter in
his hand, and again his room stifled him as it had done before when he
had flown out to walk with the Irish girl. The walls closed in upon him.
The ceiling seemed to confine him like a coffin lid, and the flickering
gas jet over his bureau burned pale like a burial candle....

He groaned, started forward to the door as though he would begin his
journey home immediately, but like many a wanderer who starts on his
voyage home and finds the old landmarks displaced, before Fairfax could
take the first step forward, his course was for ever changed.... He had
not heard Molly's knock at the door. The girl came in timidly, holding
out a telegram; she brought it as she had brought the other, without
comment, but with the Irish presentiment of ill, she remained waiting
silently, knowing in her humble breast that she was all he had.

Fairfax opened the despatch, held it transfixed, gave a cry and said to
Molly, staring her wildly in the eyes: "My mother, my mother!" and went
and fell on his knees by his bed and flung his arms across it as though
across a beloved form. He shook, agonized for a few moments, then sprang
up and stared at the desertion before him, the tears salt on his face
and his heart of steel broken. And the girl by the door, where she had
clung like a leaf blown there by a wind of grief, came up to him. He
felt her take his arm between her hands, he felt her close to him.

"It cuts the heart o' me to see ye. It's like death to see ye. Is it
your mother gone? The dear mother ye must be like? God knows there's no
comfort for that kind, but," she breathed devotedly, "I'd give the life
o' me to comfort ye."

He hardly heard her, but her presence was all he had. Her human
companionship was all that was left him in the world. He put his hand on
her shoulder and said brokenly--

"You don't know what this means. It is the end of me, the end. To think
I shall never see her again! Oh, _Mother_!" he cried, and threw up his
arms. The loving woman put hers about him as the gestu