Rounding a bend in the river, the flare of an amusement park apprised him that he was close upon the city--a city he had heretofore never visited and knew of only from his newspaper reading as a prosperous industrial center. Here, for the strangest reason in the world, he was to make his home, perhaps spend the remainder of his days! He crossed a stone bridge with a sense that the act marked an important transition in his life, and quickly passing through the park, boarded a trolley car and rode into town. He had formed a very clear idea of what he meant to do, and arriving at the business center he went directly to the Hotel Fordham, to which he had expressed his trunk from Cincinnati. III He spent an hour unpacking and overhauling his belongings, wrote notes to his banker friend in Laconia and to the cousin there with whom he had maintained a correspondence since he first went away to school. The pencil with which he idly scribbled on a sheet of hotel paper traced his name unconsciously. _Bruce Storrs._ It was not his name; he had no honest right to it. He had speculated many times in his wanderings as to whether he shouldn’t change it, but this would lead to endless embarrassments. Now, with his thoughts crystalized by the knowledge that this other man who had been his mother’s lover was within reach, he experienced a strong sense of loyalty to the memory of the man he had called father. It would be a contemptible thing to abandon the name of one who had shown him so tender an affection and understood so perfectly his needs and aims. Somewhere among the several hundred thousand people of the city about him was the man his mother had described. In the quiet room he experienced suddenly a feeling of loneliness. Usually in his wanderings he had stopped at cheap lodging houses, and the very comfort of his surroundings now added to his feeling of strangeness in having at last arrived at a goal which marked not merely the end of his physical wandering, but the termination of a struggle with his own spirit. He sent down for the evening papers and found himself scanning carefully the local news, thinking that he might find some clue to the activities of Franklin Mills. His attention was immediately caught by the caption, “Franklin Mills Sells Site of Old Homestead to Trust Company.” The name fell like a blow upon his consciousness. He seized the telephone book and hurriedly turned the pages. Mills Franklin--r 5800 Jefferson Ave...King 1322 Mills Franklin--1821 First Ntl Bnk....Main 2222 He stared at the two lines till they were a blur before his eyes. There was but one man of the name in the directory; there could be no mistake as to his identity. It was a disconcerting thought that by calling these numbers he might at any time hear Franklin Mills’s voice. The idea both fascinated and repelled him. What, after all, had he to do with Franklin Mills?