“The popular construction placed upon that act always seemed most ungenerous,” mused Wingfield. “It was a deed of noblest benevolence, not a freak of inebriety. They are still picking up the buns you scattered from the Allegheny bridge--bread cast upon the waters turning up away down at New Orleans! I have always thought if I were to go in for that sort of thing I should attack milk wagons. They say most of our milk is impure anyhow. “I suppose,” Wingfield continued, regarding with a frown a speck of soot on his cuff--“I suppose Mrs. Craighill will have a good time in Boston watching her husband at his gambollings with the saviours of the republic.” “I dare say,” replied Wayne, rising and looking at his watch. “Which reminds me that I must go up to the office and sit on the lid.” Wingfield rose at once. Wayne’s recent attendance upon his office had puzzled him. Sobriety and industry, as practised by Wayne Craighill, offered food for reflection; he was afraid to comment upon this new course in the usual terms of their raillery; he refrained from remarking upon it at all for fear of breaking the charm--whatever it might be--that had effected this change in his friend. He stood at the window of the reading-room and watched Wayne disappear toward the Craighill building. At noon Joe reported at the Craighill offices, having brought the car down ostensibly to carry Wayne’s bag to the house, but in reality to make sure that his employer had returned in good order. “I guess I’ll run up to the house with you and get some clean clothes, Joe. I’ll be down in a minute.” Joe, satisfied by his inspection, lingered a moment at the door. “Well?” demanded Wayne, glancing up again. “The widder’s home, sir!” “The what?” “The widder--Mrs. Craighill--she’s home.” This was Wayne’s first acquaintance with a nickname bestowed upon Mrs. Craighill by Joe, and derived, it appeared, from Joe’s pretended belief that a woman who marries a widower becomes a widow. “Home? When did she get home?” “Oh, she never went! She’d brought her trunk to her room to pack but passed it up.” “That will do, Joe.” As the door closed, Wayne threw himself back in his chair and stared out at the blurred sky. There was no question but that his father had intended to take Mrs. Craighill with him; the matter had been spoken of several times in his hearing; his father had called the proposed visit their wedding journey; and when he left home there had certainly been no change in his father’s plans. Nothing but illness could account for it, as Mrs. Craighill had been too short a time in the city to be subject to sudden and imperative social demands. He pushed a button and asked the chief clerk what address his father had left. It was brought to him on a tablet in Colonel Craighill’s own handwriting: “Care Colonel Winthrop Broderick, Beacon Street, Boston.” On the same sheet another address had been written and scratched out, but it could be read: Hotel Beverly.