say that it sprang from
a conflict between the Five Towns temperament and the Trenton Union of
Earthenware Operatives. Such is the power of Unions in the United
States that Toby, if he wished to remain under the Federal Flag, had
either to yield or to starve. He would not yield. He changed his name
and came to England; strolled calmly into the Crown Porcelain Works at
Derby one day, and there recommenced his career as an artificer of
earthenware. He did well. He could easily earn four pounds a week, and
had no desires, save in the direction of fly-fishing--not an expensive
diversion. He knew better than to marry. He existed quietly; and one
year trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty
and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though there are
several direct trains daily between Derby and Knype.

And now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he was in
Child Row, crossing the street towards the house whose ownership had
caused him to quit it.

He knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella. There was no
knocker; there never had been a knocker.

III

The door opened cautiously, as such doors in the Five Towns do, after a
shooting of bolts and a loosing of chains; it opened to the extent of
about nine inches, and Toby Hall saw the face of a middle-aged woman
eyeing him.

'Is this Mrs Hall's?' he asked sternly.

'No. It ain't Mrs Hall's. It's Mrs Tansley's.'

'I thowt--'

The door opened a little wider.

'That's not you, Tobias?' said the woman unmoved.

'I reckon it is, though,' replied Toby, with a difficult smile.

'Bless us!' exclaimed the woman. The door oscillated slightly under her
hand. 'Bless us!' she repeated. And then suddenly, 'You'd happen better
come in, Tobias.'

'Aye!' said Tobias.

And he entered.

'Sit ye down, do,' said his wife. 'I thowt as you were dead. They wrote
and told me so.'

'Aye!' said Tobias. 'But I am na'.'

He sat down in an arm-chair near the old-fashioned grate, with its hobs
at either side. He was acquainted with that chair, and it had not
appreciably altered since his departure. The lastingness of furniture
under fair treatment is astonishing. This chair was uncomfortably in
exactly the same spot where it had always been uncomfortable; and the
same anti-macassar was draped over its uncompromising back. Toby put
his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the
chimney-piece. His overcoat he