dug in and entrenched, and
waiting. It was an engagement where the principals met occasionally the
neutral ground of the streets, bowed to each other and passed on.

The town was sorry for David and still fond of him, but it resented his
stiff-necked attitude. It said, in effect, that when he ceased to make
Dick's enemies his it was willing to be friends. But it said also, to
each other and behind its hands, that Dick's absence was discreditable
or it would be explained, and that he had behaved abominably to
Elizabeth. It would be hanged if it would be friends with him.

It looked away, but it watched. Dick knew that when he passed by on the
streets it peered at him from behind its curtains, and whispered behind
his back. Now and then he saw, on his evening walks, that line of cars
drawn up before houses he had known and frequented which indicated a
party, but he was never asked. He never told David.

It was only when the taboo touched David that Dick was resentful, and
then he was inclined to question the wisdom of his return. It hurt
him, for instance, to see David give up his church, and reading morning
prayer alone at home on Sunday mornings, and to see his grim silence
when some of his old friends were mentioned.

Yet on the surface things were much as they had been. David rose early,
and as he improved in health, read his morning paper in his office
while he waited for breakfast. Doctor Reynolds had gone, and the desk in
Dick's office was back where it belonged. In the mornings Mike oiled
the car in the stable and washed it, his old pipe clutched in his teeth,
while from the kitchen came the sounds of pans and dishes, and the odor
of frying sausages. And Dick splashed in the shower, and shaved by the
mirror with the cracked glass in the bathroom. But he did not sing.

The house was very quiet. Now and then the front door opened, and a
patient came in, but there was no longer the crowded waiting-room,
the incessant jangle of the telephone, the odor of pungent drugs and
antiseptics.

When, shortly before Christmas, Dick looked at the books containing the
last quarter's accounts, he began to wonder how long they could fight
their losing battle. He did not mind for himself, but it was unthinkable
that David should do without, one by one, the small luxuries of his old
age, his cigars, his long and now errandless rambles behind Nettie.

He began then to think of his property, his for the claiming, and to
questio