or were strewn old-fashioned, round
rag mats that would enrapture a connoisseur, and the floor where it
showed between the mats was scrubbed to a glistening white. The
furnishings were few and homemade, but full of simple artistry--a chair
or two, and a table, upon which burned a lamp. In a fireplace, made of
stones cemented together, the natural effect unspoiled by any attempt to
hew the stones into uniformity, a log fire glowed, sputtered, and now
and then leaped cheerily into flame.

Between the table and the fire, half turned toward Madison, sat the
Patriarch. He was reading, his head bent forward, his book held very
close to his eyes. Hair, a wealth of it, soft, silky and snow-white,
reached just below his coat collar--a silvery beard fell far below his
book. But it was the face itself, no single distinguishing feature,
neither the blue eyes, the sensitive lips, nor the broad, fine forehead,
that held Madison's gaze--it seemed to combine something that he had
never seen in a face before, and to look upon it was to be drawn
instantly to the man--there was purity of thought and act stamped upon
it with a seal ineffaceable, and there was gentleness there, and
sympathy, and trust, and a simple, unassuming dignity and
self-possession--and, too, there was a shadow there, a little of
sadness, a little of weariness, a background, a relief, as it were, a
touch such as a genius might conceive to lift the picture with his brush
into wondrous, lingering, haunting consonance.

Madison's eyes, slowly, as though loath to leave the Patriarch's face,
travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white
wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly
clean--and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed
to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the
perfect, unostentatious harmony of reality.

"There's nothing to it!" whispered Madison softly to himself. "Nothing
to it! There isn't a thing left to do--not even a chance of making a
bluff at earning the money--it's just like _stealing_ it. Why, say, it
would get _me_ if I weren't behind the scenes--honest now, it would!"

Madison drew back from the window and walked toward the door of the
cottage.

"It should take me about fifteen minutes to establish myself on the
basis of a long-lost son with the Patriarch clinging confidingly around
my neck," he observed. "If it takes me any longer than that I'd feel
depre