father's attention by his own efforts. He
had noticed these things all his life, no doubt, but attached no
significance to them until he had seen his son's work in the magazines.
"If you ever paint country things, you ought to paint Cook's Mill, over
here by the falls. That's one of the prettiest things I know anywhere,"
he said to him one evening, trying to make his son feel the interest he
took. Eugene knew the place. It was attractive, a little branch of
bright water running at the base of a forty foot wall of red sandstone
and finally tumbling down a fifteen foot declivity of grey mossy stones.
It was close to a yellow road which carried a good deal of traffic and
was surrounded by a company of trees which ornamented it and sheltered
it on all sides. Eugene had admired it in his youth as beautiful and
peaceful.

"It is nice," he replied to his father. "I'll take a look at it some
day."

Witla senior felt set up. His son was doing him honor. Mrs. Witla, like
her husband, was showing the first notable traces of the flight of time.
The crow's-feet at the sides of her eyes were deeper, the wrinkles in
her forehead longer. At the sight of Eugene the first night she fairly
thrilled, for he was so well developed now, so self-reliant. He had come
through his experiences to a kind of poise which she realized was
manhood. Her boy, requiring her careful guidance, was gone. This was
someone who could guide her, tease her as a man would a child.

"You've got so big I hardly know you," she said, as he folded her in his
arms.

"No, you're just getting little, ma. I used to think I'd never get to
the point where you couldn't shake me, but that's all over, isn't it?"

"You never did need much shaking," she said fondly.

Myrtle, who had married Frank Bangs the preceding year, had gone with
her husband to live in Ottumwa, Iowa, where he had taken charge of a
mill, so Eugene did not see her, but he spent some little time with
Sylvia, now the mother of two children. Her husband was the same quiet,
conservative plodder Eugene had first noted him to be. Revisiting the
office of the _Appeal_ he found that John Summers had recently died.
Otherwise things were as they had been. Jonas Lyle and Caleb Williams
were still in charge--quite the same as before. Eugene was glad when his
time was up, and took the train back to Chicago with a light heart.

Again as on his entrance to Chicago from the East, and on his return to
it from Blackwoo