Then, quite as swiftly (out of black plotting or evil thoughts of his own, perhaps), Peter had died of pneumonia. And three days later Frank. There were two funerals, two dreary, one-carriage affairs—he remembered that so well!—for they had no money; and his pawned watch, five dollars from Marie’s mother, and seven chemical and electrical works sold to an old book man had provided the cash advance required by the undertaker! Then, spiritually, something seemed to break within him. He could not see this world, this immediate life in which he was involved, as having any significance in it for himself or any one after that. He could not stand it any more, the weariness, the boredom, the dissatisfaction with himself, the failure of himself, the sickening chain of disasters which had befallen this earlier adventure. And so— But that was why he was here to-day, after all these years—twenty-four, to be exact—with his interest in this old region so keen, if so sad. Why, there—there!—was a flock of pigeons, just like those of old Abijah Hargot’s, flying around the sky now, as then. And a curl of smoke creeping up from Tanzer’s blacksmith shop, or the one that had succeeded it, just one block from this bridge. How well he remembered old Tanzer and his forge, his swelling muscles and sooty face! He had always nodded in such a friendly way as he passed and talked of the pest of flies and heat in summer. That was why he was pausing on this bridge to-day, just to see once more, to feel, standing in the pleasant afternoon sun of this October day and gazing across the swirling waters below at the new coal-pockets, the enlarged lamp works of the George C. Woodruff Company, once a mere shed hidden away at a corner of this nearest street and rented out here no doubt because it was cheap and Woodruff was just beginning—just as he did twenty-four years before. Time had sped by so swiftly. One’s ideals and ideas changed so. Twenty years ago he would have given so much to be what he was now—rich and fairly powerful—and now—now—The beauty of this old neighborhood, to-day, even. The buff school which crowned the rise beyond, and the broad asphalt of Edgewood Avenue leading up to the old five-story flat building—the only one out here, and a failure financially—in which he and Marie had had their miserable little apartment—here it was, still to be seen. Yes, it and so many other things were all here; that group of great oaks before old Hargot’s door; the little red—if now rusted—weather-vane over his carriage house; the tall romantic tower of St. George’s Episcopal Church—so far to the west over the river, and the spars and masts of vessels that still docked here for a while. But dark memories they generated, too, along with a certain idyllic sweetness, which had seemed to envelop the whole at first. For though it had had sweetness and peace at first, how much that had been bitter and spiritually destroying had occurred here, too.