ped of that one garment of grandeur, which he had conjured
out of his own great hunger for attention, Old Jerry found a
ruthless, half-savage joy in tearing aside veil after veil, until he
found himself gazing straight back into the eyes of his own
spirit--until he saw the pitiful old fraud he really was, naked there
before him.

Just as well as though he had been a party to it he understood the
Judge's crafty exhibition of Young Denny's maimed face that morning;
he knew without a trace of doubt just what the Judge, in his ominous
silence, had meant to insinuate, and what the verdict would be that
night around the Tavern stove. What he could not understand quite was
why all of them were so easy to convince--so ready to believe--when
only the night before they had sat and heard the Judge's recital of
Jed The Red's intimate history for the benefit of the newspaper man
from the metropolis which, to name it charitably, had been anything
but a literal translation of facts.

Groping back for one single peg upon which to hang the fabric of their
oft-reiterated prophesy was alarmingly profitless. There had been
nothing, not even one little slip, since Old Denny Bolton's passing on
that bad night, years before. And from that realization he fell to
pondering with less leadenness of spirit upon what the real facts
could be which lay behind Young Denny's sudden transformation. For
that also was too real--too evident--for any eyes to overlook.

It was not until long after the hour which witnessed the return flight
of the yellow-wheeled buckboard through the village street, leaving
behind an even busier hum of conjecture than before, that he awoke to
a realization that his opportunity for a solution of the riddle was at
least better than that of the wrangling group that had turned traitor
before the post-office steps.

Long before he reached the top of the grade that ran up to the bleak
house alone on the crest, he was leaning out of his seat, trying to
penetrate the double gloom of rain and twilight; but not until he had
reined in his horse was he positive that there was no shadowy figure
standing there waiting for his arrival.

He could not quite understand the sensation which the boy's absence
waked in him at that instant. Days afterward he knew it had been
lonesomeness--a rather bewildering loneliness--for no matter what his
reception chanced to be along the way, Young Denny's greeting had been
infallibly regular.

And an