Finally one sunny day Fred left the hospital. At the corner where he waited for a street-car, a small boy came along, to stop and gaze in awe at the disfigured man. Others joined him, and soon a ring of young faces surrounded him. Kinear had a sense of humor great enough to overcome, in a measure, the bitterness of this experience, and he laughed, or at least he intended to laugh, but it was only a matter of spirit and vocal cords, because the lips did not respond, and he saw the young faces shrink back in fear at what, to them, was merely a horrible noise. Kinear never laughed again. In the car, when he asked a question of the conductor, and under the stimulus of a terrible effort to enunciate clearly, his face twisted itself into a horrible caricature, someone laughed, and thenceforth he spoke only when it became necessary. He sat down on the long seat, and a young woman made an involuntary movement away from him. That cut deep, and his self-consciousness now caused him to misinterpret smiles and nods among the other passengers. The steam that scarred his face was as nothing compared to the manifestations of fear and ridicule and scorn that he saw, or imagined he saw; and a new process began within him. Where before it had been only the flesh that had suffered, now his very soul began to blight and shrivel, drawing in and away from the scarred shell of his body until he became a machine, driven by his mentality only. People who knew him said that from that day on, he became a soulless automaton, with a heart of iron, an emotionless, heartless creature of flesh and blood, asking sympathy of none and granting even as he received. Whether these things were true or not, the fact remained that Fred Kinear had ceased to exist as such, and from then on he was known as Scarface, or sometimes as Ironheart. * * * * * In the home of John Grahame, the man whom they knew as Ironheart lay under the care of Jane and the country doctor they had called in from Barliton. During the days immediately following the blizzard there had been times when it seemed they were waging a useless fight. This strange, silent man who suffered without complaint and who received their ministrations without thanks or comment, hovered very near the shadows. Hour after hour, for many days and nights, Jane sat beside the stricken man and did as the doctor or her own intuitions directed. Sometimes the doctor took her place, and when he could not come and she became exhausted from her long vigil, Grahame left his work and sat by the sick man while she rested.