no mechanical sense of
coming back; this was as much the end of his proud, prosperous life as
death itself could have been. He was returning to begin life anew, but
he knew as well as he knew that he should not find his vanished youth
in his native hills, that it could never again be the triumph that it
had been. That was impossible, not only in his stiffened and weakened
forces, but in the very nature of things. He was going back, by grace
of the man whom he owed money, to make what he could out of the one
chance which his successful rivals had left him.

In one phase his paint had held its own against bad times and ruinous
competition, and it was with the hope of doing still more with the
Persis Brand that he now set himself to work. The West Virginia people
confessed that they could not produce those fine grades, and they
willingly left the field to him. A strange, not ignoble friendliness
existed between Lapham and the three brothers; they had used him
fairly; it was their facilities that had conquered him, not their
ill-will; and he recognised in them without enmity the necessity to
which he had yielded. If he succeeded in his efforts to develop his
paint in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small scale
compared with his former business, which it could never equal, and he
brought to them the flagging energies of an elderly man. He was more
broken than he knew by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does,
but it weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. He lapsed more
and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, and that
bragging note of his was rarely sounded. He worked faithfully enough
in his enterprise, but sometimes he failed to seize occasions that in
his younger days he would have turned to golden account. His wife saw
in him a daunted look that made her heart ache for him.

One result of his friendly relations with the West Virginia people was
that Corey went in with them, and the fact that he did so solely upon
Lapham's advice, and by means of his recommendation, was perhaps the
Colonel's proudest consolation. Corey knew the business thoroughly,
and after half a year at Kanawha Falls and in the office at New York,
he went out to Mexico and Central America, to see what could be done
for them upon the ground which he had theoretically studied with Lapham.

Before he went he came up to Vermont, and urged Penelope to go with
him. He was to be first in the city o