streets with him as before--walking defiantly and with shame
those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal
parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace. Now he went
forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and
quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that
they did so. Once his father rallied him upon his "grumpiness"; then he
grew sullen--though trying to smile--thinking with mortification of his
grandfather. He understood the old man now.

He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but
loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was
glad when his father went--this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a
twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy
All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever
they were!

CHAPTER XI

THE STRONG PERSON'S NARRATIVE

Near the close of the following winter came news of the father's death.
In some town of which the boy had never heard, in another State, a
ramshackle wooden theatre had burned one night and the father had perished
in the fire through his own foolhardiness. The news came by two channels:
first, a brief and unilluminating paragraph in the newspaper, giving
little more than the fact itself.

But three days later came a friend of the father, bringing his few poor
effects and a full relation of the matter. He was a person of kind heart,
evidently, to whom the father had spoken much of his boys in Edom--a
bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of
the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a
portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand
piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable and busy violinists.

He told his tale to the two boys and Clytie, Grandfather Delcher having
wished to hear no more of the occurrence.

"You understan', it was like this now," he began, after having with a
calculating eye rejected two proffered chairs of delicate structure and
selected a stout wooden rocker into which he settled tentatively, as one
whom experience had taught to distrust most of the chairs in common use.

"The people in front had got out all right, the fire havin' started on the
stage from the strip-light, and also our people had got out through the
little stage-entrance, though havin' to leav