The brakeman inspected Leppel through the glass of the door, and concerted measures with the conductor, to be taken if the supposed maniac should become violent. But there was no danger of violence from poor Leppel. He had not yet begun to realize what had happened to him; only he felt queer, and very numb and stupid. The numbness and stupidity had not worn off when he stepped upon the platform, at Micklegard, of the station nearest his home. The model was heavy, and he was just alive enough to resolve to leave it at the ticket-office. The clerk was known to him, and recognized immediately the package of which he was asked to take charge. “What?” he said with cheerful consternation, “fetched it back, after all? No go, eh?” “No,” said Leppel, slowly and stupidly, “it was no go.” He walked away bent and draggingly. The clerk looked after him, then stowed the model carefully away on a high shelf. “Well, I’m blest!” he said. “I certainly am!” It was barely daylight of a January morning, and in the upper windows of his home, when he reached it, shone a faint light. A feeble baby wail came down the staircase as he opened the door. Leppel was not too stupid to understand _that_. Another mouth to be fed; that was what the cry meant to the house-father who had thrown away his children’s daily bread in pursuit of a shadow. He climbed the steep stairs that led up directly from the little parlor to his bedroom door, where Dora met him, smiling kindly. “She is doing well,” she said, “and it is another fine boy. But, oh!” as she noticed the look upon his face, “don’t tell her any bad news if you can help it.” “If I can help it,” he said assentingly. His brain seemed only equal to repeating what was said to him. He went into the room, and sat upon a chair by Anna’s bedside. They had been bad friends for some time, but he was scarcely awake enough to dread her tongue now. “Well,” she said angrily, “have you nothing to say? You might tell me you are glad I am safe through with it.” “I am glad,” he said obediently, “that you are safe through with it.” “And you had better be,” she cried. “I don’t know what your children would have done without me,—such a father as they have! Here! don’t you care to see your baby?” She pulled the cover from its face, and he inspected it with the same dull obedience, but beginning now to be unpleasantly conscious of Anna’s angry eyes. Yet all the while the old love was tugging at her heartstrings, as she read in his face and bearing the story of his failure. But she would not spare him; Anna had not learned to spare either herself or others. “And your invention? Of course that was a failure, as I always told you!” “Yes,” he said in English, recalling the words of the ticket-clerk, “yes, it was no go.”