rently preferring to
live on money which Gerhardt had long since concluded was not being
come by honestly. He was now pretty well satisfied as to the true
relations of Jennie and Lester. At first he had believed them to be
married, but the way Lester had neglected Jennie for long periods, the
humbleness with which she ran at his beck and call, her fear of
telling him about Vesta--somehow it all pointed to the same
thing. She had not been married at home. Gerhardt had never had sight
of her marriage certificate. Since she was away she might have been
married, but he did not believe it.

The real trouble was that Gerhardt had grown intensely morose and
crotchety, and it was becoming impossible for young people to live
with him. Veronica and William felt it. They resented the way in which
he took charge of the expenditures after Martha left. He accused them
of spending too much on clothes and amusements, he insisted that a
smaller house should be taken, and he regularly sequestered a part of
the money which Jennie sent, for what purpose they could hardly guess.
As a matter of fact, Gerhardt was saving as much as possible in order
to repay Jennie eventually. He thought it was sinful to go on in this
way, and this was his one method, out side of his meager earnings, to
redeem himself. If his other children had acted rightly by him he felt
that he would not now be left in his old age the recipient of charity
from one, who, despite her other good qualities, was certainly not
leading a righteous life. So they quarreled.

It ended one winter month when George agreed to receive his
complaining brother and sister on condition that they should get
something to do. Gerhardt was nonplussed for a moment, but invited
them to take the furniture and go their way. His generosity shamed
them for the moment; they even tentatively invited him to come and
live with them, but this he would not do. He would ask the foreman of
the mill he watched for the privilege of sleeping in some
out-of-the-way garret. He was always liked and trusted. And this would
save him a little money.

So in a fit of pique he did this, and there was seen the spectacle
of an old man watching through a dreary season of nights, in a lonely
trafficless neighborhood while the city pursued its gaiety elsewhere.
He had a wee small corner in the topmost loft of a warehouse away from
the tear and grind of the factory proper. Here Gerhardt slept by day.
In the afternoon he w