appeared, indeed, to almost forget the prison, so busy was he in
recalling trivial details and unimportant memories of events long
since past. He babbled incessantly of his old neighbors, calling them
by name, and chuckling feebly as he told her of their foibles and
peculiarities.

"But we must give them every cent of the money, father," she
insisted; "we must make everything right."

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes, we'll fix it up somehow with the creditors," he
would say.

Then he would scowl and rub his shorn head with his tremulous old
hands.

"What did they do with the house, Margaret?" he asked, over and over,
a furtive gleam of anxiety in his eyes. "They didn't tear it down;
did they?"

He waxed increasingly anxious on this point as the years of his
imprisonment dwindled at last to months. And then her dream had
unexpectedly come true. She had money--plenty of it--and nothing
stood in the way. She could never forget the day she told him about
the house. Always she had tried to quiet him with vague promises and
imagined descriptions of a place she had completely forgotten.

"The house is ours, father," she assured him, jubilantly. "And I am
having it painted on the outside."

"You are having it painted on the outside, Margaret? Was that