Never before had he been so surely leaving everything as he was now.
In the old days of separation, there had always been _home_ in the
background. During that hideous year when he was shut behind bars, his
thoughts had clung to home, to his father! He had meant then to go
back and reform! Poor Larry! he had nothing to reform, but he had not
realized that. Then Maclin caught him and instead of being reformed,
Larry was moulded into a new shape--Maclin's tool. Well, Maclin was
done with, too! Larry strode on in the semi-darkness. The morning was
dull and deadly chill.

Traditional prejudice rose in Rivers and made him hard and bitter. He
felt himself a victim of others' misunderstanding.

If he had had a--mother! Never before had this emotion swayed him. He
knew little or nothing of his mother. She had been blotted out. But he
now tried to think that all this could never have happened to him had
he not been deprived of her. In the cold, damp morning Larry reverted
to his mother over and over again. Good or bad, she would have stood
by him! There was no one now; no one.

"And Mary-Clare!" At this his face set cruelly. "She should have stood
by me. What was her sense of duty, anyway?"

She had always eluded him, had never been his. Larry rebelled at this
knowledge. She had been cold and demanding, selfish and hard. No woman
has a right to keep herself from her husband. All would have been well
if she had done her part. And Noreen was his as well as Mary-Clare's.
But she was keeping everything. His father's house; the child; the
money!

By this time Larry had lashed himself into a virtuous fury. He felt
himself wronged and sinned against. He was prepared to hurt somebody
in revenge.

Larry went to the yellow house. It was empty. There was a fire on the
hearth and a general air of recent occupancy and a hurried departure.
A fiendish inspiration came to Rivers. He would go to that cabin of
Mary-Clare's and wait for her. She should get her freedom there, where
she had forbidden him to come. He'd enter now and have his say.

Larry took a short cut to the cabin and by so doing reached it before
Mary-Clare, who had taken Noreen to Peneluna's--not daring to take her
to the inn.

Larry came to within a dozen yards of the cabin when he stopped short
and became rigid. He was completely screened from view, but, for the
moment, he did not give this a thought. There was murder in his heart,
and only cowardice held him back