was to go by the
five-thirty train to Marchfield, whence by taking the short cut through
Willoughby's Lane and County Street they could reach home for breakfast
by seven. Home, it had to be told, was no longer the little place on the
north bank of the pond, but a three-family house on the Thorley estate,
with a "back piazza" for yard and nothing at all in the way of garden. A
home without a garden to an old man who had lived in gardens all his
life was more of an irony than a home without a rooftree, but even this
evoked from the sufferer only a mild statement of the fact. Mildness,
resigned and apparently satisfied, marked all the turnings of the
narrative unfolded as they plodded to the station, while the son took
the opportunity to scan at his leisure those changes in the sunken face
that had shocked him at the moment of encounter.

It was no new tale that Matt heard, but it pieced together the isolated
facts made known to him in the few letters he had received and the
scattered bits of family news he had been able to pick up on
visiting-days. For all of it he was prepared. He would have been
prepared for it even if he had received no hint in advance, since it was
nothing but what the weak must expect from the strong and the poor from
the rich. "We'll change all that," was his only comment; but he made it
whenever he found an opening.

Only once did he permit himself to go beyond the dogged repetition of
this phrase. "Got in with some fellows there"--he jerked his head
backward in the direction from which they had come--"who've thought the
whole business out. Could always get together--us trusties.
Internationals them fellows were--the I. I. A--heard of 'em, haven't
you? No bread and treacle in _their_ program. Been handing that out too
long."

The difference between the face Matt Fay had looked forward to seeing
and the one which was now turned up to him was that between a mirror and
a pane of glass. In a mirror there would have been reflection and
responsiveness. Here there was nothing but a blank, shiny stare,
vitreous and unintelligent. Jasper Fay, it seemed to his son, had passed
into some pitiful and premature stage of dotage.

To the released prisoner the change was but one more determining factor
in his own state of mind. He was prepared to find his mother in worse
case than his father, and Rosie in worse case still. Poor little Rosie!
She was the traditional victim of the rich man's son. So be it. Since