is father in a mood, not common with him,
but which was growing commoner as he grew older, of serene
cheerfulness. He had talked to Hugh very eagerly about a little book
of poems that Hugh had lately published. Hugh had hardly mentioned it
to his father beforehand, but he had dedicated the book to him, though
he imagined that his father must consider poetry a dilettante kind of
occupation. He was amazed to find, when he discussed the book with his
father, that he was met with so vivid and personal a sympathy, that he
discerned that the writing of poetry must have been a preoccupation of
his father's in early days, one of those delicate ambitions on which he
had sharply turned the key. His mother and sister were away for the
day, so that when it was time to go, and the carriage was announced,
there was no one but his father in the house. He had, as his custom
was, laid his hand on his son's head, and blessed him with a deep
emotion, adding a few words of love and confidence that had filled
Hugh's eyes with tears; and his father had then put his arm through his
son's, walked to the door with him, and had stood there in the bright
morning, with his grey hair stirred by the wind, waving his hand till
the carriage had turned the corner of the shrubbery.

Hugh often suffered from a certain apprehensiveness of mind on leaving
home; he had sometimes wondered, as he said farewell to the group,
whether he would see them thus again. But that morning it had never
occurred to him that there was any such possibility in store for him;
so that now, when he returned to the darkened house, and presently saw
that pale, still form, with a quiet smile on the face, as of one
satisfied beyond his dearest wish, he plunged into a depth of
ineffectual sorrow such as he had never known before. The one thought
that sustained him was that he and his father had loved, understood,
and trusted each other. It was a horror to Hugh to think what his
feelings might have been in the old days, if his father had died when
his own predominant emotion had been a respectful fear of him.

It seemed impossible to believe that all the activities of that long
life were over; and as Hugh went through his father's papers, with
incessant little heart-broken griefs at the arrangements and precisions
that had stood for so much devoted faithfulness and loyal
responsibility, it seemed to him as though the door must open, and the
well-known figure, with the smile