nities for speech
with her. During them he hoped to win her confidence by degrees.

In the bedroom up-stairs, where the mother was again seated in her
upholstered arm-chair with the quilt across her knees, he endeavored to
put into practice his idea of mental therapeutics. He began by speaking
of Matt, using the terms that would most effectively challenge her
attention. "When he comes back, you know, we must make him forget that
he's ever worn stripes."

She eyed him sternly. "What'd be the good of his forgetting it? He'll
have done it, just the same."

"Some of us have done worse than that, and yet--"

"And yet we didn't get into Colcord for them. But that's what counts.
You can do what you like as long as you ain't put in jail. Look at your
father--"

"So when he comes home--" he interrupted, craftily.

She leaned forward, throwing the quilt from her knees. "See here," she
asked, confidentially, "how would you feel if you saw your son coming up
out of hell?"

"How should I feel? I should be glad he was coming up instead of going
down. You would, too, wouldn't you? And now that he's coming up we must
keep him up. That's the point. So many poor chaps that have been in his
position feel that because they've once been down they've got to stay
down. We must make him see that he's come back among friends--and you
must tell us what to do. You must give your mind to it and think it out.
He's your boy--so it's your duty to take the lead."

Her cold eye rested on him as if she were giving his words
consideration. "Why don't you ask your father to take the lead? He sent
him to Colcord."

Thor got no further than this during the hour he spent with her, seeing
that Uncle Sim had been right in describing the case as one for
ingenuity--and something more. Questioning himself as to what this
something more could be, he brought up the subject tentatively with
Jasper Fay, whom he met on leaving the house. Thor himself stood on the
door-step, while Fay, who wore gardening overalls, confronted him from
the withered grass-plot that ended in a leafless hedge of bridal-veil.

"She's never been a religious woman at all, has she?"

Fay answered with a distant smile. "She did go in for religion at one
time, sir; but I guess she found it slim diet. It got to seem to her
like Thomas Carlyle's hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed.
After that she quit."

"I had an idea that you belonged to the First Church and were Dr.
Hil