Through a quiet street leading toward Mulberry Avenue walked a man, haggard of face, misty of eye. He was a small man, almost a youth, of meagre frame and rather pronounced garb. He carried a rusty satchel, grimy and battered, like the scarred veteran of a long and strenuous campaign. Now he was passing a dusky corner; one he had good cause to remember, but his thoughts were far away. So he failed to associate the low, two-story building with the significant words of the scared woman, frowsy and unkempt, who clattered down the stairs and across the walk, halting and startling him. "Mercy o' God, sir, what'll I do?" she cried. "He's dead, sir, a-sittin' in his chair. Sure, I do his work for him an' I went over to see when he'd want me agin an' the door was open--I lit a light to see what was the matter--Ah! the dead, white, grinnin' face of him!--an' what'll I do?" She wrung her hands. He had listened impatiently--what concern was it of his? "Policeman on the corner," he told her, with a backward jerk of his thumb. The charwoman ran toward the approaching officer. O'Byrn passed on, dismissing the incident instantly from his pre-occupied mind. He was done forever with the affairs of his unknown father. A little later he paused at a corner intersecting Mulberry Avenue and set his satchel upon the curb. He gazed down the street toward the dim outlines of an humble frame house, a solitary light shining from a lower window. Long he stood silently regarding the little dwelling. Then slowly from his pocket he drew three letters which he had written at a hotel hours before. In the wavering radiance of an adjacent electric light he scanned the addresses upon the envelopes. He stepped to a nearby letter box and consigned to it the notes prepared for Harkins and Glenwood. The third he held hesitantly for a moment, regarding it through a briny mist. So this was the end--the miserable, heart-breaking end. It was now for him the long road--alone. "Micky!" Swiftly he wheeled, his face alight with a trembling incredulity of joy. His startled eyes looked straight into hers that were mystically dark in the night shadows intruding upon the shimmering arc from the street lamp nearby. Dressed simply in coat and gown of the brown hue he liked so well, with a hat of the same shade, she made a picture to rest his wearied eyes. "It's good to see you, girlie," he exclaimed, a break in his voice. "But it isn't wise, is it, when you're just over being so ill? Where have you been?" "Only walking about, Micky. You know I grew stronger real fast. Don't you know, you were surprised to find me so much better? I've been about the house for a week, even helped mother a little the last two or three days. And tonight I couldn't rest indoors, somehow, I had to be out in this glorious air. You needn't scowl that way, I had the doctor's permission this afternoon to go out if I wanted to. Today I've heard of nothing but your story. It was grand work, Micky."