eople whom he used
to know on the train. It was after dark, but the winter sky was full
of stars, which seemed very near as he took his way up the street
towards the Anderson house. He walked slowly when he approached the
house, and frequently cast a look behind him, as if he were afraid of
being seen. When he reached the house he saw the curtains in the
sitting-room were not drawn, and a warm glow of home seemed to shine
forth into the wintry night. Carroll cautiously went up the steps,
very softly. He went far enough to see the interior of the room, and
he saw Charlotte and her husband sitting there. Mrs. Anderson was
there also. She was reading the Bible, as befitted a Sunday night.
Now and then she looked at Charlotte with a look of the utmost love
and pride. Anderson, who was reading the paper, looked up, and the
watching man saw him, and his eyes and Charlotte's met. The man
watching knew that no anxiety about him seriously troubled her then,
that she was entirely happy, and a feeling of sublime content and
delight that it should be so, and he quite outside of it all, came
over him.

He went softly down the steps and along the street to the station,
where he could get a train back to the City in a few moments. To his
own amazement, he was quite happy, he was even more than happy. A
species of exaltation possessed him. Even the thought of himself,
Arthur Carroll, posing nightly as a buffoon before the City crowds,
did not daunt him. He realized a kind of joyful acquiescence with
even that. He felt a happy patience when he considered the time that
might elapse before he could see his family again. He passed the
butcher's shop, and reflected with delight that he should be able to
meet the note which was due next day. He remembered happily that he
had been able to send Charlotte a little sum of money for her
_trousseau_, and that perhaps a part of it had bought the pretty,
rose-colored dress which she was wearing that night. Still, all this
did not altogether account for the wonderful happiness which seemed
to fill him as with light. He hurried along the street frozen in
ridges like a sea, and he remembered what Anna had written about the
man who had wronged him, and all at once he understood what filled
him with this exaltation of joy, and he understood that underneath
all the petty dishonors of his life had been a worse dishonor which
took hold of his very soul and precipitated all the rest, and that he
was now ri