r. Albert was modern enough to
prefer wireless--just then coming in--to "bugs" and postage-stamps; but
the time remaining had been short. Besides, Albert liked the theatre
better; and Raymond, during those last weeks in August, had sat through
many woeful and stifling performances of vaudeville that he might regain
and keep his hold on his son. His presence at these functions was
observed and was commented upon by several persons who were aware of the
aid he was giving for a bettered stage.

"Fate's irony!" he himself would sometimes say inwardly, with a sidelong
glance at Albert, preoccupied with knockabouts or trained dogs.

Albert spent some of his daylight hours in bed; some in moving about the
room spiritlessly. He looked out with lack-lustre eyes at the sagging
wires, and seemed to be wondering how they could ever have interested
him. His mother, as soon as she saw him, put him at death's door--at
least she saw him headed straight for that dark portal. She began to
insist, after a few days, that he go home with her: he would be hers, by
right, within a fortnight, anyhow. Her new house, she declared, would be
an immensely better place for him, and would immensely help him to get
well, if--with a half-sob--he ever _was_ to get well.

She knew, of course, the early legend of Johnny McComas, and had no wish
to linger in its locale.

"You _do_ want to go with your own, own mother--don't you, dear?"

"Yes," replied Albert faintly.

The town-house of Johnny McComas, bought at an open-eyed bargain and on
a purely commercial basis, had some time since fulfilled its predestined
function. It had been taken over, at a very good price, by an automobile
company; the purchasers had begun to tear it down before the last load
of furniture was fairly out, and had quickly run up a big block in
russet brick and plate glass. Gertrude McComas had had no desire to
inherit memories of her predecessor; if she had not urged the promptest
action her husband's plan might have given him a still more gratifying
profit.

They had built their new house out on the North Shore. At one time the
society of that quarter had seemed, however desirable to the McComases,
somewhat inaccessible. But the second wife was more likely to help
Johnny thitherward than the first. Besides, the participation of the new
pair in the scheme of dramatic uplift--however slight, essentially--had
made the promised land nearer and brighter. They might now transplant