The poverty of this city working-man's home was plain to see. It struck in upon Bertha with the greater power by reason of her six months of luxury. It was not a dirty home, but it was cluttered and hap-hazard. The old wooden chairs were worn with scouring, but littered with children's rags of clothing. The smell of boiling cabbage was in the air, for dinner-time was nigh. There were three rooms on the ground-floor and one of these was living-room and dining-room, the other the kitchen, and a small bedroom showed through an open door. For all its disorder it gave out a familiar odor of homeliness which profoundly moved Haney. "Ye've grown like the mother, Fan. And I do believe some of these chairs are her's." "They are. When Dad broke up the house and went to live with Kate I put in a bid for the stuff and I brought some of it out here with me." "I'm glad ye did. That old rocker now--sure it's the very one we used to fight for. I'll give ye twenty-five dollars for it, Fan." "Ye can have it for the askin', Mart," she generously replied--tears of pleasure in her eyes. "Sure, after all the tales I heard of ye--it's to see you takin' fine to the mother's chair. She was a good mother to us, Mart." "She was!" he answered. "And if the old Dad had been as much of a man as she was, we'd all stand in better light to-day I'm thinkin'--though the father did the best he knew." "The worst he did was to let us all run wild. A club about our shoulders now and then would have kept our tempers sweeter." Bertha, in rich new garments, seemed as alien to the scene as any fine lady visiting among the slums. She was struggling, too, between disgust of her sister-in-law's slovenly house and untidy dress, and the good humor, tender sentiment and innate motherliness of her nature. There was charm in her voice and in her big gray eyes. Irish to the core, she could storm at one child and coo with another an instant later. She was like Mart, or rather Mart became every moment more of her kind and less of the bold and remorseless desperado he had once seemed to be. The deeper they dug into the past the more of his essential kinship to this woman he discovered. He greeted her children with kindly interest, leaving a dollar in each chubby, dirty fist, and when McArdle came into the room Fan had quite conquered her awe of Bertha's finery. McArdle was a small bent man, with a black beard, a pale serious face and speculative eyes. He looked like a wondering, rather cautious animal as he came in. He wore a cheap gray suit and a celluloid collar, and was as careless in his way as his wife. It was plain that he was gentle, absent-minded, and industrious.