“I’ve a mind,” he said one morning, “to go home. I don’t think she” (he had quit calling her “Ann” now) “could drive me out now. All I’d want would be to just sit in a corner o’ the house and be with him. That’s all.” “Bob,” I said to him one morning, “you rascal, you are starving!” He couldn’t deny it. He tried to put it off, but he couldn’t. His face told on him. “Have you had anything to eat to-day?” “No, sir.” “Nor yesterday?” “No, sir.” I gave him a half-dollar. A wolfish glare of hunger shot into his eyes as he saw the money. He clutched it with a spasm of haste and started off. I watched his side-long walk down the street, and then went to work, satisfied that he would go off and pack himself full. It was hardly an hour before he came back, his face brighter than I had seen it in months. He carried a bundle in his live hand. He laid it on my desk, and then fell back on his dead leg while I opened it. I found in the bundle a red tin horse, attached to a blue tin wagon, on which was seated a green tin driver. I looked up in blank astonishment. “For him!” he said simply. And then he broke down. He turned slowly on his live leg as an axis and leaned against the wall. “Could you send it to him?” he said at last. “If she knew I sent it, she mightn’t let him have it. He’s never had nothin’ o’ this kind, and I thought it might pearten him up.” “Bob, is this the money I gave you?” “Yes, sir.” “And you were starving when you left here?” “Oh, I got some bread!” * * * * * I suppose every man, woman and child remembers that terrible night three years ago when we had lightning while the snow was on the ground. The flashes plowed great yellow seams through the gray of the day, and at night a freezing storm of sleet and rain came. It was a terrible night. I staggered home through it to where a big fire, and blue eyes and black, and slippers, and roasting apples were awaiting me. I thought of Bob—my old night-owl, with a heart in him, and wondered whether he was keeping his silent, but uncomplaining vigil about the little hut on the hillside. I even went so far as to speculate on this point with a certain blue-eyed youngster on my knee, to whom Bob’s life was a romance and a wonder. Bless me! and all the time I was pitying him, I didn’t know that he had “gone home” and was all right.