le-down root
fence, all in the midst of brush and briers. Lord, what a habitation it
was! But such a view--rivers, mountains, meadows, and orchards in the
distance! That is where I lived with my mother. What a life!
I hated everything, everybody but her."

Mr. Ault paused, his strong, dark face working with passion, as the
memory of his outlawed boyhood revived. Is it possible that this pirate
of the Street had a bit of sentiment at the bottom of his heart? After a
moment he continued:

"That was the spot to which my mother took me when I was knee-high. I've
bought it, bought the whole hillside. Next summer we will put up a house
there, not a very big house, just a long, low sort of a Moorish pavilion,
the architect calls it. I wish she could see it."

Mrs. Ault rose, with tears in her gentle eyes, stood by her husband's
chair a moment, ran her fingers through his heavy black locks, bent down
and kissed him, and went away without a word.

There was another bit of property that was not included in the wreck.
It belonged to Mrs. Mavick. This was a little house in Irving Place, in
which Carmen Eschelle lived with her mother, in the days before the death
of Henderson's first wife, not very happy days for that wife. Carmen had
a fancy for keeping it after her marriage. Not from any sentiment, she
told Mr. Mavick on the occasion of her second marriage, oh, no, but
somehow it seemed to her, in all her vast possessions left to her by
Henderson, the only real estate she had. It was the only thing that had
not passed into the absolute possession and control of Mavick. The great
town house, with all the rest, stood in Mavick's name. What secret
influence had he over her that made her submit to such a foolish
surrender?

It was in this little house that the reduced family stowed itself after
the downfall. The little house, had it been sentient, would have been
astonished at the entrance into it of the furniture and the remnants of
luxurious living that Mrs. Mavick was persuaded belonged to her
personally. These reminders of former days were, after all, a mockery in
the narrow quarters and the pinched economy of the bankrupt. Yet they
were, for a time useful in preserving to Mrs. Mavick a measure of
self-respect, her self-respect having always been based upon what she had
and not what she was. In truth, the change of lot was harder for Mrs.
Mavick than for Evelyn, since the world in which the latter lived had not
been destroye