rell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless
charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against
him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family
one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of
them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door
without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and
looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the
bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair
which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him.

It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a
lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his
children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and
he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone
again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to
light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window
he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on
the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man.

"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you,
anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute,
'Lectra."

Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known
Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman
beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs.
Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the
least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence,
especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and
deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a
knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for
mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did
not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for
a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick
felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard.
Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be
dumned," said Elbridge.

His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you
going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not
present; he stood so dumb and impassive.

"I d' know as I kn