regrets.

By the back door of the house stood the pale, tired-looking wife who,
putting out her hand, took the hand of the boy. There were tears in her
eyes. And then saying nothing Sam turned and hurried off up the street,
Freedom and his wife walked to the front gate and watched him go. From a
street corner, where he stopped in the shadow of a tree, Sam could see
them there, the wind swinging the lantern in Freedom's hand and the
slender little old wife making a white blotch against the darkness.




CHAPTER VI


Sam went along the board sidewalk homeward bound, hurried by the driving
March wind that had sent the lantern swinging in Freedom's hand. At the
front of a white frame residence a grey-haired old man stood leaning on
the gate and looking at the sky.

"We shall have a rain," he said in a quavering voice, as though giving a
decision in the matter, and then turned and without waiting for an answer
went along a narrow path into the house.

The incident brought a smile to Sam's lips followed by a kind of weariness
of mind. Since the beginning of his work with Freedom he had, day after
day, come upon Henry Kimball standing by his gate and looking at the sky.
The man was one of Sam's old newspaper customers who stood as a kind of
figure in the town. It was said of him that in his youth he had been a