weazened, whiskered face. He looked so like her memory-picture of her
grandfather that she burst out laughing. "Don't be hard on the poor old
gentleman, father," she cried. "How can you resist that appeal? Tell him
to come in and make himself at home."

As her father did not answer, she glanced at him. He had not heard her;
he was staring straight ahead with an expression of fathomless
melancholy. The smile faded from her face, from her heart, as the light
fades before the oncoming shadow of night. Presently he was
absent-mindedly but tenderly stroking her hair, as if he were thinking of
her so intensely that he had become unconscious of her physical presence.
The apparition of Simeon had set him to gathering in gloomy assembly a
vast number of circumstances about his two children; each circumstance
was so trivial in itself that by itself it seemed foolishly
inconsequential; yet, in the mass, they bore upon his heart, upon his
conscience, so heavily that his very shoulders stooped with the weight.
"Put your house in order," the newcomer within him was solemnly warning;
and Hiram was puzzling over his meaning, was dreading what that meaning
might presently reveal itself to be. "Put my house in order?" muttered
Hiram, an inquiring echo of that voice within.

"What did you say, father?" asked Adelaide, timidly laying her hand on
his arm. Though she knew he was simple, she felt the vastness in him that
was awe-inspiring--just as a mountain or an ocean, a mere aggregation of
simple matter, is in the total majestic and incomprehensible. Beside him,
the complex little individualities among her acquaintances seemed like
the acrostics of a children's puzzle column.

"Leave me with your brother awhile," he said.