it
was for him to see that she was avenged, he asked nothing better. The
more wrongs there were besides his own, the more he was justified in
joining the campaign of blood and fire, of eloquence and dynamite, to
which he felt a call.

He thought sullenly over these things as the train jogged through the
rich fields and market-gardens on the way to Marchfield, and the quiet
little man with the glassy stare and the gentle, satisfied, senile smile
sat silent in the seat beside him. Matt Fay was glad of the silence. It
left him the more free to gaze at the meadows and pastures, at the
turnips and carrots and cabbages, of which the dewy glimpses fled by in
successive visions of wonder. It was difficult not to believe that the
sky had grown bluer, the earth greener, and the whole round of nature
more productive during the years in which he had been "put away." His
surprise in this recognition of the beauty of the world gave a poignant,
unexpected blend to his wrath at having been compelled to forfeit it.

He got the same effect from every bird and bee and butterfly that
crossed his path between Marchfield and the village. No yellowing spray
of goldenrod, no blue-eyed ragged-robin, but symbolized the blessings of
which he had been cheated. In proportion as the sun broke through the
bank of cloud, burning away the mist and drawing jeweled rays from the
dewdrops, the new recruit in revolution found his zeal more eager to
begin. The very flagging and stumbling of the steps that tottered beside
his own intensified his ardor.

CHAPTER XXXIV

"It was more strange than I dare tell you, mother dear," Lois added to
the letter of details which she wrote at odd minutes during the day,
"that that poor old man should have broken down just at our door. There
was a kind of fatality in it, as if he had come to throw himself at our
feet. The son would have gone on if his father had been able to drag
himself another yard; but he wasn't. It was all we could do to get him
up the portico steps and into the nearest seat.

"I wonder if you remember him--old Mr. Fay? If so, you wouldn't know him
now. I can only compare him to a tree that's been attacked at the roots
and shrivels and dries in a season. He seems to have passed from sixty
to ninety in the course of a few months, as if the very principle of
life had failed him. It would be pitiful if it wasn't worse. I mean that
we're afraid it may be worse, though that is a matter which as