ed that the
lamp in the kitchen was lit. Then the door was opened, and he saw, plain
against the light, a man's figure, his father's. No doubt the old man
was watching and listening. Perhaps the sound of the wheels reached him
through the evening air, for in a few minutes he came out and walked
down the drive. Hyacinth saw him fumble with the fastening of the
rickety gate, and at last open it slowly and with difficulty. The car
reached a gap in the loose stone wall, a familiar gap, for across it lay
a short cut up a steeper part of the hill, which the road went round.
Hyacinth jumped down and ran up the path. In another minute the
greeting of father and son was accomplished, and the two were walking
hand-in-hand towards the house. Hyacinth noticed that his father
trembled, and that his feet stumbled uncertainly among the loose stones
and stiff weeds.

When they entered the lighted room he saw that his father seemed
older--many years older--than when he had said good-bye to him two
months before. His skin was very transparent, his lips were tremulous,
his eyes, after the first long look at his son, shifted feebly to the
fire, the table, and the floor.

'My dear son,' he said, 'I thank God that I have got you safe home
again. Indeed, it is good to see you again, Hyacinth, for it has been
very lonely while you were away. I have not been able to do very much
lately or to go out to the seashore, as I used to. Perhaps it is only
that I have not cared to. But I have tried hard to get everything ready
for your coming.'

He looked round the room with evident pride as he spoke. Hyacinth
followed his gaze, and it was with a sense of deep shame that he found
himself noticing the squalor of his home. The table was stained, and the
books which littered half of it were thick with dust and grease-spotted.
The earthen floor was damp and pitted here and there, so that the chairs
stood perilously among its inequalities. The fine white powder of turf
ashes lay thick upon the dresser. The whitewash above the fireplace was
blackened by the track of the smoke that had blown out of the chimney
and climbed up to the still blacker rafters of the roof. Hyacinth
remembered how he, and not his father, had been accustomed to clean the
room and wash the cups and plates. He wondered how such matters had been
managed in his absence, and a great sense of compassion filled his eyes
with tears as he thought of the painful struggle which the details
of