In the little house on the bluff there was silence. Outside the house there was darkness and darkness lay over Sam’s spirit. The boy Joe went quickly about, putting the dishes Sam had wiped on the shelves. Somewhere on the river, far below the house, a steamboat whistled. The backs of the hands of the boy were covered with freckles. How quick and competent the hands were. Here was new life, as yet clean, unsoiled, unshaken by life. Sam was shamed by the trembling of his own hands. He had always wanted quickness and firmness within his own body, the health of the body that is a temple for the health of the spirit. He was an American and down deep within himself was the moral fervor that is American and that had become so strangely perverted in himself and others. As so often happened with him, when he was deeply stirred, an army of vagrant thoughts ran through his head. The thoughts had taken the place of the perpetual scheming and planning of his days as a man of affairs, but as yet all his thinking had brought him to nothing and had only left him more shaken and uncertain then ever.

The dishes were now all wiped and he went out of the kitchen glad to escape the shy silent presence of the boy. “Has life quite gone from me? Am I but a dead thing walking about?” he asked himself. The presence of the children had made him feel that he was himself but a child, a grown tired and shaken child. There was maturity and manhood somewhere abroad. Why could he not come to it? Why could it not come into him?

The boy Tom returned from having put his sister into bed and the two boys said good night to the strange man in their mother’s house. Joe, the bolder of the two, stepped forward and offered his hand. Sam shook it solemnly and then the younger boy came forward.

“I’ll be around here to-morrow I think,” Sam said huskily.

The boys were gone, into the silence of the house, and Sam walked up and down in the little room. He was restless as though about to start on a new journey and half unconsciously began running his hands over his body wishing it strong and hard as when he tramped the road. As on the day when he had walked out of the Chicago Club bound on his hunt for Truth, he let his mind go so that it played freely over his past life, reviewing and analysing.

For hours he sat on the porch or walked up and down in the room where the lamp still burned brightly. Again the smoke from his pipe tasted good on his tongue and all the night air had a sweetness that brought back to him the walk beside the bridle path in Jackson Park when Sue had given him herself, and with herself a new impulse in life.

It was two o’clock when he lay down upon a couch in the living-room and blew out the light. He did not undress, but threw his shoes on the floor and lay looking at a wide path of moonlight that came through the open door. In the darkness it seemed that his mind worked more rapidly and that the events and motives of his restless years went streaming past like living things upon the floor.

Suddenly he sat up and listened. The voice of one of the boys, heavy with sleep, ran through the upper part of the house.

“Mother! O Mother!” called the sleepy voice, and Sam thought he could hear the little body moving restlessly in bed.

Silence followed. He sat upon the edge of the couch, waiting. It seemed to him that he was coming to something; that his brain that had for hours been working more and more rapidly was about to produce the thing for which he waited. He felt as he had felt that night as he waited in the corridor of the hospital.

In the morning the three children came down the stairs and finished dressing in the long room, the little girl coming last, carrying her shoes and stockings and rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. A cool morning wind blew up from the river and through the open screened doors as he and Joe cooked breakfast, and later as the four of them sat at the table Sam tried to talk but did not make much progress. His tongue was heavy and the children seemed looking at him with strange questioning eyes. “Why are you here?” their eyes asked.

For a week Sam stayed in the city, coming daily to the house. With the children he talked a little, and in the evening, when the mother had gone away, the little girl came to him. He carried her to a chair on the porch outside and while the boys sat reading under the lamp inside she went to sleep in his arms. Her body was warm and the breath came softly and sweetly from between her lips. Sam looked down the bluffside and saw the country and the river far below, sweet in the moonlight. Tears came into his eyes. Was a new sweet purpose growing within him or were the tears but evidence of self pity? He wondered.

One night the black-haired woman again came home far gone in drink, and again Sam led her up the stairs to see her fall muttering and babbling upon the bed. Her companion, a little flashily dressed man with a beard, had run off at the sight of Sam standing in the living-room under the lamp. The two boys, to whom he had been reading, said nothing, looking self-consciously at the book upon the table and occasionally out of the corner of their eyes at their new friend. In a few minutes they too went up the stairs, and as on that first night, they put out their hands awkwardly.

Through the night Sam again sat in the darkness outside or lay awake on the couch. “I will make a new try, adopt a new purpose in life now,” he said to himself.

When the children had gone to school the next morning, Sam took a car and went into the city, going first to a bank to have a large draft cashed. Then he spent many busy hours going from store to store and buying clothes, caps, soft underwear, suit cases, dresses, night clothes, and books. Last of all he bought a large dressed doll. All these things he had sent to his room at the hotel, leaving a man there to pack the trunks and suit cases, and get them to the station. A large, motherly-looking woman, an employé of the hotel, who passed through the hall, offered to help with the packing.

After another visit or two Sam got back upon the car and went again to the house. In his pockets he had several thousands of dollars in large bills. He had remembered the power of cash in deals he had made in the past.

“I will see what it will do here,” he thought.

In the house Sam found the black-haired woman lying on a couch in the living-room. As he came in at the door she arose unsteadily and looked at him.

“There’s a bottle in the cupboard in the kitchen,” she said. “Get me a drink. Why do you hang about here?”

Sam brought the bottle and poured her a drink, pretending to drink with her by putting the bottle to his lips and throwing back his head.

“What was your husband like?” he asked.

“Who? Jack?” she said. “Oh, he was all right. He was stuck on me. He stood for anything until I brought men home here. Then he got crazy and went away.” She looked at Sam and laughed.

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