Fairchild's boy!" She had reached out for his
handbag, and then, bustling about him, drew him into the big "parlor"
with its old-fashioned, plush-covered chairs, its picture album, its
glass-covered statuary on the old, onyx mantel. "Did n't I know you
the minute I saw you? Land, you're the picture of your dad! Sakes
alive, how is he?"

There was a moment of silence. Fairchild found himself suddenly
halting and boyish as he stood before her.

"He 's--he 's gone, Mrs. Howard."

"Dead?" She put up both hands. "It don't seem possible. And me
remembering him looking just like you, full of life and strong and--"

"Our pictures of him are a good deal different. I--I guess you knew
him when everything was all right for him. Things were different after
he got home again."

Mother Howard looked quickly about her, then with a swift motion closed
the door.

"Son," she asked in a low voice, "did n't he ever get over it?"

"It?" Fairchild felt that he stood on the threshold of discoveries.
"What do you mean?"

"Didn't he ever tell you anything, Son?"

"No. I--"

"Well, there was n't any need to." But Mother Howard's sudden
embarrassment, her change of color, told Fairchild it was n't the
truth. "He just had a little bad luck out here, that was all.
His--his mine pinched out just when he thought he 'd struck it rich--or
something like that."

"Are you sure that is the truth?"

For a second they faced each other, Robert Fairchild serious and
intent, Mother Howard looking at him with eyes defiant, yet
compassionate. Suddenly they twinkled, the lips broke from their
straight line into a smile, and a kindly old hand reached out to take
him by the arm.

"Don't you stand there and try to tell Mother Howard she don't know
what she 's talking about!" came in tones of mock severity. "Hear me?
Now, you get up them steps and wash up for dinner. Take the first room
on the right. It's a nice, cheery place. And get that dust and grime
off of you. The dinner bell will ring in about fifteen minutes, and
they 's always a rush for the food. So hurry!"

In his room, Fairchild tried not to think. His brain was becoming too
crammed with queries, with strange happenings and with the aggravating
mysticisms of the life into which his father's death had thrown him to
permit clearness of vision. Even in Mother Howard, he had not been
able to escape it; she told all too plainly, both by her actions and
her words, tha