physician for delivery at her death, merely repeated what she had told him.

In his constant rereadings he had hoped that one day he would find that he had misinterpreted the message. He might dismiss his mother’s story as the fabrication of a sick woman’s mind. But today he knew the folly of this; the disclosure took its place in his mind among the unalterable facts of his life. At first he had thought of destroying himself; but he was too sane and the hope of life was too strong for such a solution of his problem. And there had been offers—flattering ones—to go to New York and Boston. He convinced himself that his mother could not seriously have meant to limit the range of his opportunities by sending him to the city where his unknown father lived. But he was resolved not to shirk; he would do her bidding. There was a strain of superstition in him: he might invite misfortune by disregarding her plea; and moreover he had the pride and courage of youth. No one knew, no one[5] need ever know! He had escaped from the feeling, at first poignant, that shame attached to him; that he must slink through life under the eyes of a scornful world. No; he had mastered that; his pride rallied; he felt equal to any demand fate might make upon him; he was resolved to set his goal high....

[5]

Life had been very pleasant in Laconia, the Ohio town where John Storrs had been a lawyer of average attainments—in no way brilliant, but highly respected for his probity and enjoying for years a fair practice. Bruce had cousins of his own age, cheery, wholesome contemporaries with whom he had chummed from childhood. The Storrs, like the Bruces, his mother’s people, were of a type familiar in Mid-western county seats, kindly, optimistic, well-to-do folk, not too contented or self-satisfied to be unaware of the stir and movement of the larger world.

The old house, built in the forties by John Storrs’s grandfather, had become suddenly to Bruce a strange and alien place that denied his right of occupancy. The elms in the yard seemed to mock him, whispering, “You don’t belong here!” and as quickly as possible he had closed the house, made excuses to his relatives, given a power of attorney to the president of the local bank, an old friend, to act for him in all matters, and announced that he’d look about a bit and take a vacation before settling down to his profession.

This was all past now and he had arrived, it seemed inevitably, at the threshold of the city where his father lived.

The beauty of the declining day stirred longings and 

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