It was not Janey's eminently practical observations which had stirred him to-night. He had been drifting toward this feverish crisis of feeling for months, and had contested its approach inch by inch. There were hours when he was overpowered by the force of what he battled against, and this was one of them. It was nearly midnight when he returned, and his mother met him at the door with an anxious look. It was a look he had seen upon her face all his life; but its effect upon himself had never lessened from the day he had first recognized it, as a child. "I did not think you would wait for me," he said. "It is later than I thought." "I am not tired," she answered. She had aged a little since her husband's death, but otherwise she had not changed. She looked up at her son just as she had looked at his father,--watchfully, but saying little. "Are you going to bed?" "I am going upstairs," he replied. But he did not say that he was going to bed. He bade her good-night shortly afterward, and went to his room. It was the one his father had used before his death, and the trunk containing his belongings stood in one corner of it. For a short time after entering the room he paced the floor restlessly and irregularly. Sometimes he walked quickly, sometimes slowly; once or twice he stopped short, checking himself as he veered toward the corner in which stood the unused trunk. "I'm in a queer humor," he said aloud. "I'm thinking of it as if--as if it were a temptation to sin. Why should I?" He made a sudden resolute movement forward. He knelt down, and, turning the key in the lock, flung the trunk-lid backward. There was only one thing he wanted, and he knew where to find it. It lay buried at the bottom, under the unused garments, which gave forth a faint, damp odor as he moved them. When he rose from his knees he held the wooden case in his hand. After he had carried it to the table and opened it, and the model stood again before him he sat down and stared at it with a numb sense of fascination. "I thought I had seen the last of it," he said; "and here it is." Even as he spoke he felt his blood warm within him, and flush his cheek. His hand trembled as he put it forth to touch and move the frame-work before him. He felt as if it were a living creature. His eye kindled, and he bent forward. "There's something to be done with it yet," he said. "It's _not_ a blunder, I'll swear!" He was hot with eagerness and excitement. The thing had haunted him day and night for weeks. He had struggled to shake off its influence, but in vain. He had told himself that the temptation to go back to it and ponder over it was the working of a morbid taint in his blood. He had remembered the curse it had been, and had tried to think of that only; but it had come back to him again and again, and--here it was.