y.

Richard tenderly found out from his father's shamefaced reluctance,
later, that no great mischief had been done. But no precaution on his
part availed to keep Bittridge from demonstrating the good feeling
between himself and the Kentons when the judge started for New York the
next afternoon. He was there waiting to see him off, and he all but
took the adieus out of Richard's hands. He got possession of the judge's
valise, and pressed past the porter into the sleeping-car with it, and
remained lounging on the arm of the judge's seat, making conversation
with him and Richard till the train began to move. Then he ran outside,
and waved his hand to the judge's window in farewell, before all that
leisure of Tuskingum which haunted the arrival and departure of the
trains.

Mary Kenton was furious when her husband came home and reported the fact
to her.

"How in the world did he find out when father was going?"

"He must have come to all the through trains since he say him yesterday.
But I think even you would have been suited, Mary, if you had seen his
failure to walk off from the depot arm-in-arm with me:

"I wouldn't have been suited with anything short of your knocking, him
down, Dick."

"Oh, that wouldn't have done," said Richard. After a while he added,
patiently, "Ellen is making a good deal of trouble for us."

This was what Mary was thinking herself, and it was what she might have
said, but since Dick had said it she was obliged to protest. "She isn't
to blame for it."

"Oh, I know she isn't to blame."

V.

The father of the unhappy girl was of the same mixed mind as he rode
sleeplessly back to New York in his berth, and heard the noises of
slumber all round him. From time to time he groaned softly, and
turned from one cheek to the other. Every half-hour or so he let his
window-curtain fly up, and lay watching the landscape fleeting past; and
then he pulled the curtain down again and tried to sleep. After passing
Albany he dozed, but at Poughkeepsie a zealous porter called him
by mistake, and the rest of the way to New York he sat up in the
smoking-room. It seemed a long while since he had drowsed; the thin nap
had not rested him, and the old face that showed itself in the glass,
with the frost of a two days' beard on it, was dry-eyed and limply
squared by the fall of the muscles at the corners of the chin.

He wondered how he should justify to his wife the thing which he felt as
accountable f