beds. With trembling hands she lighted a lamp that stood on a table by
her head. Downstairs the front door of our restaurant went shut with a
bang and in a few minutes father tramped up the stairs. He held an egg
in his hand and his hand trembled as though he were having a chill.
There was a half insane light in his eyes. As he stood glaring at us I
was sure he intended throwing the egg at either mother or me. Then he
laid it gently on the table beside the lamp and dropped on his knees
beside mother's bed. He began to cry like a boy and I, carried away by
his grief, cried with him. The two of us filled the little upstairs
room with our wailing voices. It is ridiculous, but of the picture we
made I can remember only the fact that mother's hand continually
stroked the bald path that ran across the top of his head. I have
forgotten what mother said to him and how she induced him to tell her
of what had happened downstairs. His explanation also has gone out of
my mind. I remember only my own grief and fright and the shiny path
over father's head glowing in the lamp light as he knelt by the bed.

As to what happened downstairs. For some unexplainable reason I know
the story as well as though I had been a witness to my father's
discomfiture. One in time gets to know many unexplainable things. On
that evening young Joe Kane, son of a merchant of Bidwell, came to
Pickleville to meet his father, who was expected on the ten o'clock
evening train from the South. The train was three hours late and Joe
came into our place to loaf about and to wait for its arrival. The
local freight train came in and the freight crew were fed. Joe was left
alone in the restaurant with father.

From the moment he came into our place the Bidwell young man must have
been puzzled by my father's actions. It was his notion that father was
angry at him for hanging around. He noticed that the restaurant keeper